Samuel Butler: Use

Samuel Butler was novelist. Explore interesting quotes on use.

Samuel Butler: 464 quotes13 likes

“All thinking is of disturbance, dynamical, a state of unrest tending towards equilibrium. It is all a mode of classifying and of criticising with a view of knowing whether it gives us, or is likely to give us, pleasure or no.”

Thinking
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part V - Vibrations

“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

“The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.”

Future and Past
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy