Samuel Butler: Doing

Samuel Butler was novelist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Samuel Butler: 464 quotes13 likes

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“A man is the resultant and exponent of all the forces that have been brought to bear upon him, whether before his birth or afterwards. His action at any moment depends solely upon his constitution, and on the intensity and direction of the various agencies to which he is, and has been, subjected. Some of these will counteract each other; but as he is by nature, and as he has been acted on, and is now acted on from without, so will he do, as certainly and regularly as though he were a machine.
We do not generally admit this, because we do not know the whole nature of any one, nor the whole of the forces that act upon him. We see but a part, and being thus unable to generalise human conduct, except very roughly, we deny that it is subject to any fixed laws at all, and ascribe much both of a man’s character and actions to chance, or luck, or fortune; but these are only words whereby we escape the admission of our own ignorance; and a little reflection will teach us that the most daring flight of the imagination or the most subtle exercise of the reason is as much the thing that must arise, and the only thing that can by any possibility arise, at the moment of its arising, as the falling of a dead leaf when the wind shakes it from the tree.”

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 25

“I doubt whether any angel would find me very entertaining. As for myself, if ever I do entertain one it will have to be unawares. When people entertain others without an introduction they generally turn out more like devils than angels.”

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

“When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it, except that it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had been yet prepared for. And this made me wretched; for I cannot bear having much to do with people who think differently from myself.”

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 9

“We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers.”

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

“We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

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

“You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.”

Faith, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXI - Rebelliousness

“Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.”

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

“A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. "Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one. "I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes on."”

Adam and Eve
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XVI - Written Sketches

“The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

“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