1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes
page 5

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

“Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 26

Feeling , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“A man’s style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.”

Samuel Butler

A Man's Style
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Art

“Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.”

Samuel Butler

The Roman Empire
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Business

“They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say “Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.”

Samuel Butler

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

“Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve?”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Money , People , Universe

“Their view evidently was that genius was like offences--needs must that it come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes. A man’s business, they hold, is to think as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad. And really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the word “idiot” only means a person who forms his opinions for himself.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

Business , Thinking , Help , Personality

“A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.”

Samuel Butler

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

Idea

“The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 34

“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.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 14

Music , Appearance , Literature

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Sleep , Lie , Dogs

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Time , Thinking , World

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Incoherency of New Ideas
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

Patience , Idea

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Idea , Way

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Books

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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

Religion , People , Men

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Ancient Work
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature

Understanding , Dead , Personality , Thinking

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Organic and Inorganic
Source: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

Understanding , Business , Animals