Samuel Butler: Trending quotes (page 7)

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“No one with any sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 10

Money , Health , Birth , Nature

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.”

Samuel Butler

Thought and Word, viii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Money

“I am the enfant terrible of literature and science.”

Samuel Butler

Myself
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature

Literature , Science

“We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower animals.”

Samuel Butler

Darwin Among the Machines
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part III - The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit

Dogs , Animals , Horse , Dependency

“There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.”

Samuel Butler

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

Death

“All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.”

Samuel Butler

Development
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“There are two classes, those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.”

Samuel Butler

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

Thinking

“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.”

Samuel Butler

Portraits
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Painting

“To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so.”

Samuel Butler

Memory, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IV - Memory and Design

Thinking

“It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.”

Samuel Butler

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

Life , Money , Hope , Art

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Nature

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

“There is nothing less powerful than knowledge unattached, and incapable of application. That is why what little knowledge I have has done myself personally so much harm. I do not know much, but if I knew a good deal less than that little I should be far more powerful.”

Samuel Butler

Knowledge is Power
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Knowledge , Personality

“It is not our business,” he said, “to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

Business , Thinking , Help

“Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal.”

Samuel Butler

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

“If it be urged that the action of the potato is chemical and mechanical only, and that it is due to the chemical and mechanical effects of light and heat, the answer would seem to lie in an inquiry whether every sensation is not chemical and mechanical in its operation? whether those things which we deem most purely spiritual are anything but disturbances of equilibrium in an infinite series of levers, beginning with those that are too small for microscopic detection, and going up to the human arm and the appliances which it makes use of? whether there be not a molecular action of thought, whence a dynamical theory of the passions shall be deducible? Whether strictly speaking we should not ask what kind of levers a man is made of rather than what is his temperament? How are they balanced? How much of such and such will it take to weigh them down so as to make him do so and so?”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

Lie , Light , Passion

“We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster. Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much about our own sufferings. Since, then, they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we call them emotionless; and so qua mankind they are; but mankind is not everybody.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

Pain , Suffering

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Colour http://books.google.com/books?id=JHguFYrTEQ0C&q=%22It+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%22&pg=PA141#v=onepage
Often paraphrased as "Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

Life , Money , Friendship