186 quotes
If a man would get hold of the public era, he must pay, marry, or fight.
Ramblings in Cheapside (1890)
We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long alive but whose appearance we know through their portraits.
Ramblings in Cheapside (1890)
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George's, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.
The Way of All Flesh (1903)
Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
And should we not be guilty of consummate folly if we were to reject advantages which we cannot obtain otherwise, merely because they involve a greater gain to others than to ourselves?
Erewhon (1872)
Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
An artist's touches are sometimes no more articulate than the barking of a dog who would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at nothing.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be
We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?
Ramblings in Cheapside (1890)
There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Sin is like a mountain with two aspects according to whether it is viewed before or after it has been reached: yet both aspects are real.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
The great 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.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
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.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
God does not intend people, and does not like people, to be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but a little too bad is more venial with him than a little too good.
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)