Samuel Butler: Thing (page 2)

“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

“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

“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.”

Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 25

Law , Exercises , Imagination , Birth

“Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.”

Samuel Butler

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

“The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.
Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles — I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith — things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.”

Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Men , Money , World , Faith

“Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.”

Samuel Butler

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

Confidence

“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

“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