Samuel Butler: Doing

“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.”

Samuel Butler

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.

“Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.”

Samuel Butler

Learning

“All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.”

Samuel Butler

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

Men

“But so engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know, and can thus save them from the trouble of thinking for themselves, that in a short time would-be philosophers and faddists became more powerful than ever, and gradually led their countrymen to accept all those absurd views of life.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 27

Life , People , Thinking , Time

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“People say that there are neither dragons to be killed nor distressed maidens to be rescued nowadays. I do not know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor do I feel sure whether the most mortal wounds have been inflicted by the dragons or by myself.”

Samuel Butler

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

People , Feeling , Thinking

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

““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