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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
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Samuel Butler: 232   quotes 5   likes

Samuel Butler Quotes

“Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace.”

Samuel Butler

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

Nature

“It is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 5

People

“Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every time they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than to the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must be millions of slugs all over the world over for every single turtle.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Death , World , Time

“A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.”

Samuel Butler

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.pt/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&dq=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=_LPRUvmtGa_b7AbdjoCADQ&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBjgK, compiled and edited by ‎A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 27

Dreams

“Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.”

Samuel Butler

Falsehood, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience

Truth , Lie , Fools , Sense

“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

“A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

Life , Men , Disease

“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”

Samuel Butler

The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book X

Life , Death

“They [my thoughts] are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them.”

Samuel Butler

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

Thinking , Personality

“They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not said in saying this?”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 17

Sense

“All eating is a kind of proselytising — a kind of dogmatising — a maintaining that the eater’s way of looking at things is better than the eatee’s.”

Samuel Butler

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

Way

“He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one’s teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society.”

Samuel Butler

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

Fools

“To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.”

Samuel Butler

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.com/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q="To+do+great+work+a+man+must+be+very+idle+as+well+as+very+industrious"&pg=PA262#v=onepage, compiled and edited by A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 262

“But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy: for they know that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men’s pockets, in which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 12

Men , Parting

“To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.”

Samuel Butler

Providence and Improvidence, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

God , Way , Chance

“In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all.”

Samuel Butler

Equilibrium
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part V - Vibrations

Understanding

“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?”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Life , Death , Nature

“A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 11

Lovers

““Plants,” said he, “show no sign of interesting themselves in human affairs. We shall never get a rose to understand that five times seven are thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence we say that the oak and the rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our business conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a creature who talks in this way know about intelligence? Which shows greater signs of intelligence? He, or the rose and oak?”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 27

Way , Intelligence , Understanding , Business

“Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.”

Samuel Butler

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

Time , Personality

“I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.”

Samuel Butler

Falsehood, iv
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience

Hate , Lying

“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”

Samuel Butler

Hamlet, Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and others
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Life , Death , Men , Memory

“The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.”

Samuel Butler

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

World

“The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.”

Samuel Butler

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

Water

“Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.”

Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Time

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Madness

“Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and nothing else.”

Samuel Butler

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

Religion , Music , Literature , Painting

“The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other.”

Samuel Butler

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

“The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being.”

Samuel Butler

God's Laws
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

God , Law

““To be born,” they say, “is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 19

Life , Time