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Samuel Butler Quotes

1835–1902 England

Samuel Butler (December 4, 1835 – June 18, 1902) was a British satirist, most famous for his novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh.

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Also known as: Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Random Samuel Butler quote

186 quotes

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)

The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1934)

It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling?

Erewhon (1872)

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

The Way of All Flesh (1903)

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.

The Way of All Flesh (1903)

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)

God cannot alter the past, historians can

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)

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say “Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

Money…is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good judge, but there is no better.

Erewhon (1872)

The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar —
He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs.

Attribution

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