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Samuel Butler quotes

English (34)

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“Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Books are like imprisoned souls until some one takes them down from a shelf and reads them.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Analogy points in this direction, and though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
“Life is one long process of getting tired.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“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.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“If life must not be taken too seriously—then so neither must death.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it—and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
“Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“We all like to forgive, and we all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
“Every man’s work . . . is always a portrait of himself” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
“Logic is like the sword—those who appeal to it shall perish by it.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense; but some are greater nonsense than others.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“It has, I believe, been often remarked that a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“An Apology for the Devil . . . It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“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.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“You see, poetry resembles metaphysics, one does not mind one's own, but one does not like any one else's.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Let us eat and drink neither forgetting nor remembering death unduly. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy and the less we think about it the better.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler
“Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
“A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.” Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

Related topics

death lie feeling life reason instinct love work God forgetting friendship dolls bookshelves conclusion books truth foolishness faith portrait self

Related sources

The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (29)
The Way of All Flesh (5)