Samuel Butler Quotes

Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895

Money
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Complete Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 27

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 26

Dragons
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri

Gentleman
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Samuel Butler's Notebooks http://books.google.com/books?id=cjk3AAAAIAAJ&q="The+most+important+service+rendered+by+the+press+and+the+magazines+is+that+of+educating+people+to+approach+printed+matter+with+distrust" (1951)

Incoherency of New Ideas
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Context: An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

The Law
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Context: The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.

Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1912) self censored "d_____d" in original publication
Context: It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any d_____d thing thou likest except me." This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it.

Philosophy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles
Context: As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circumvent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the interlacing of the roots of things with one another.

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons
Context: I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.

Life and Habit http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lfhb10h.htm, ch. 5 (1877)
Context: "Words, words, words," he writes, "are the stumbling-blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of things as they are, and not of the words that misrepresent them, you cannot think rightly. Words produce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there are none. Words divide; thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only differentiations of the same thing. To think of a thing they must be got rid of: they are the clothes that thoughts wear—only the clothes. I say this over and over again, for there is nothing of more importance. Other men's words will stop you at the beginning of an investigation. A man may play with words all his life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes. If I could think to you without words you would understand me better."

Genius, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

The Art of Propagating Opinion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri
Context: Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them.

Religion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
Context: 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.

Unity and Multitude
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter
Context: We can no longer separate things as we once could: everything tends towards unity; one thing, one action, in one place, at one time. On the other hand, we can no longer unify things as we once could; we are driven to ultimate atoms, each one of which is an individuality. So that we have an infinite multitude of things doing an infinite multitude of actions in infinite time and space; and yet they are not many things, but one thing.

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
Context: Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh; it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision to vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.

Organic and Inorganic
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter
Context: Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals’ and plants’ business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.

Criticism
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Context: Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
Context: All we know is, that even the humblest dead may live along after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doing it in the bodies and memories of these that come after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament. It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.

Darwin Among the Machines
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part III - The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit
Context: Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Ancient Work
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature
Context: If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.

Sparks
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Context: Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again.

Ch. 67 http://books.google.com/books?id=wZAEAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA338
The Way of All Flesh (1903)
Context: As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names — not about things; practically the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.

The Law
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Context: The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.

Detail
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting
Context: One reason why it is as well not to give very much detail is that, no matter how much is given, the eye will always want more; it will know very well that it is not being paid in full. On the other hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop sooner or later. Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon.

Life, xvi
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?
Source: The Way of All Flesh

Dogs
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 19

An Apology for the Devil
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
Source: The Note Books of Samuel Butler

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14
Context: Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

Life and Love
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Silence and Tact
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Great Things
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Ego and Non-Ego
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles

Waste-Paper Baskets
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Inarticulate Touches
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Feeling
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

Waste
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

Life and Habit http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lfhb10h.htm, ch. 8 (1877)

Matter and Mind, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

Cannibalism
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Handel and Bach, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 75

Intellectual Self-Indulgence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Philosophy and Equal Temperament
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles

Ephemeral and Permanent Success
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Accuracy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Apologia, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIV - The Life of the World to Come