Samuel Butler: Likeness
Samuel Butler was novelist. Explore interesting quotes on likeness.“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”
Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895
“As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie.”
Philosophy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XX - First Principles
Context: 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.
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.
The Art of Propagating Opinion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part X - The Position of a HomoUnius Libri
Context: 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.
Religion
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality
Context: 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.
“Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms.”
Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
Context: Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh; it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision to vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.
Detail
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting
Context: One reason why it is as well not to give very much detail is that, no matter how much is given, the eye will always want more; it will know very well that it is not being paid in full. On the other hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop sooner or later. Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon.
“To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.”
Life and Love
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy
“Feeling is an art and, like any other art, can be acquired by taking pains.”
Feeling
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter
Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 75
“[Ideas] are like shadows — substantial enough until we try to grasp them.”
Ideas
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Italians and Englishmen
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons
“An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.”
Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 72
Inaccuracy
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXII - Reconciliation
Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)
Mental and Physical Pabulum
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter