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Samuel Butler Quotes
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Samuel Butler was the iconoclastic English author of the Utopian satirical novel Erewhon and the semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903. Both have remained in print ever since. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted today. He was also an artist. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. December 1835 – 18. June 1902
Samuel Butler photo
Samuel Butler: 232   quotes 5   likes

Samuel Butler Quotes

“No Erewhonian believes that the world is as black as it has been here painted, but it is one of their peculiarities that they very often do not believe or mean things which they profess to regard as indisputable.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 20

World , Painting

“As a matter of course, the basis on which he decided that duty could alone rest was one that afforded no standing-room for many of the old-established habits of the people. These, he assured them, were all wrong, and whenever any one ventured to differ from him, he referred the matter to the unseen power with which he alone was in direct communication, and the unseen power invariably assured him that he was right.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

People , Communication

“[Ideas] are like shadows — substantial enough until we try to grasp them.”

Samuel Butler

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

Idea

“Thought pure and simple is as near to God as we can get; it is through this that we are linked with God.”

Samuel Butler

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

God

“We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.”

Samuel Butler

Heaven and Hell
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Women , Men , Truth , World

“The greatest poets never write poetry. The Homers and Shakespeares are not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so with Handel among musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.”

Samuel Butler

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

Music , Literature , Personality

“Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.”

Samuel Butler

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

Death , War

“God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion.”

Samuel Butler

"Rebelliousness", Note-Books (1912)

God

“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

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

Thinking

“Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.”

Samuel Butler

Italians and Englishmen
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Question , Hurt

“Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.”

Samuel Butler

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

Art , Way

“He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.”

Samuel Butler

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

Men

“Always eat grapes downwards — that is, always eat the best grape first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.”

Samuel Butler

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

Way

“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?”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 25

“The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.”

Samuel Butler

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

Men , Education , Business

“How is it, I wonder, that all religious officials, from God the Father to the parish beadle, should be so arbitrary and exacting.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 23; this is one of the passages excised from <cite>The Way of All Flesh</cite> when it was first published in 1903, after Butler's death, by his literary executor, R. Streatfeild. This first edition of <cite>The Way of All Flesh</cite> is widely available in plain text on the internet, but readers of facsimiles of the first edition should be aware that Streatfeild significantly altered and edited Butler's text, "regularizing" the punctuation and removing most of Butler's most trenchant criticism of Victorian society and conventional pieties. Butler's full manuscript, entitled <cite>Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh</cite>, was edited and issued by Daniel F. Howard in 1965. It is from this edition that this quote is derived; it was excised by Streatfeild in the first edition.

God

“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.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 13

Thinking , Suffering

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

People

“An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 72

Life , Dogs , Housing

“The mere fact that a thought or idea can be expressed articulately in words involves that it is still open to question; and the mere fact that a difficulty can be definitely conceived involves that it is open to solution.”

Samuel Butler

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

Idea , Question

“I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea.”

Samuel Butler

Inaccuracy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXII - Reconciliation

Stupidity , Idea

“Morality turns on whether the pleasure precedes or follows the pain. Thus, it is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first, and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.”

Samuel Butler

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

Pain , Pleasure , Drink

“For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge. Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 12

Marriage , Law , Revenge

“I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry if anyone gives me one for my private library.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Books

“Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.”

Samuel Butler

As quoted in 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1988) by Robert Byrne

Animals

“I should not advise anyone with ordinary independence of mind to attempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung and out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, people will and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as there is no knowing where he may not take them.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

People , Confidence

“It is here that almost all religions go wrong. Their priests try to make us believe that they know more about the unseen world than those whose eyes are still blinded by the seen, can ever know--forgetting that while to deny the existence of an unseen kingdom is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its bare existence is no better.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 15

World , Religion , Forgetting

“Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.”

Samuel Butler

First lines of Butler's translation of The Iliad (1898)

Men , Dogs , Soul , Singing

“When we go up to the shelves in the reading-room of the British Museum, how like it is to wasps flying up and down an apricot tree that is trained against a wall, or cattle coming down to drink at a pool!”

Samuel Butler

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

Drink , Tree , Reading , Flying

“Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die.”

Samuel Butler

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

Life , Death , Memory , Forgetting

“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”

Samuel Butler

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Pleasure , Education , Fools , Art

“No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.”

Samuel Butler

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

Death , Disappointment , Knowledge , Thinking

“We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.”

Samuel Butler

Argument http://books.google.com/books?id=JHguFYrTEQ0C&q=&quot;We+are+not+won+by+arguments+that+we+can+analyse+but+by+tone+and+temper+by+the+manner+which+is+the+man+himself&quot;&pg=PA329#v=onepage
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles

“Strange fate for man! He must perish if he get that, which he must perish if he strive not after. If he strive not after it he is no better than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 19

Fate

“I call it to mind and delight in it now, but I did not notice it at the time. We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other. He who wrote, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas,” might have written quite as truly, “O infortunatos nimium sua si mala norint”; and there are few of us who are not protected from the keenest pain by our inability to see what it is that we have done, what we are suffering, and what we truly are. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 3

Pain , Way , Suffering , Appearance

“Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home.”

Samuel Butler

The Odyssey of Homer (1900), opening lines

Life , Men , Travel , Home

“The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“I could hardly avoid a sort of suspicion that some of those whom I was taken to see had been so long engrossed in their own study of hypothetics that they had become the exact antitheses of the Athenians in the days of St. Paul; for whereas the Athenians spent their lives in nothing save to see and to hear some new thing, there were some here who seemed to devote themselves to the avoidance of every opinion with which they were not perfectly familiar, and regarded their own brains as a sort of sanctuary, to which if an opinion had once resorted, none other was to attack it.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

Study

“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

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

Dead

“It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 20

Love , Money , Evil

“Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.”

Samuel Butler

Supreme Occasions
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XVII - Material for a Projected Sequel to Alps and Sanctuaries

Men

“I felt comparatively happy, but I can assure the reader that I had had a far worse time of it than I have told him; and I strongly recommend him to remain in Europe if he can; or, at any rate, in some country which has been explored and settled, rather than go into places where others have not been before him. Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 4

Nature , Time , Country , Happiness

“This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.””

Samuel Butler

The Ancient Mariner
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XV - Titles and Subjects

“One great reason why clergymen’s households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 24

Home , Housing

“It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.”

Samuel Butler

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

Hate

“Silence,” it has been said by one writer, “is a virtue which renders us agreeable to our fellow-creatures.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

Silence

“But I did not yield at once; I enjoyed the process of being argued with too keenly to lose it by a prompt concession; besides, a little hesitation rendered the concession itself more valuable.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 16

“To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

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

People , World , Happiness

“Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.”

Samuel Butler

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

Nature