Samuel Butler citations (242 citations, Page 5)

Samuel Butler: 242 citations 2 J'aime

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Samuel Butler citations célèbres

“La vie est l’art de tirer des conclusions des prémisses insuffisantes.”

Samuel Butler

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
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“La vie est comme la musique: pour la composer on doit s’orienter par l’oreille, le sentiment et l’instinct, non par les règles. Néanmoins, c’est mieux de les connaître, parce que parfois elles aident dans des cas douteuses – quoique pas souvent.”

Samuel Butler

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often
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“On peut tous faire des grandes choses, si on sait qu’est-ce qu’une grande chose.”

Samuel Butler

All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.
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“L'avantage de faire l'éloge de soi-même personnellement c'est qu'on peut insister autant qu'on veut sur précisément les aspects qu'on veut.”

Samuel Butler

The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
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“C'est beaucoup plus sûr de savoir trop peu que de savoir trop. Les gens condamneront les uns, mais ils en voudront aux autres à cause d'être obligés à se démener pour les atteindre.”

Samuel Butler

It is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.
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“Saint Antoine a tenté les démons autant qu’ils lui ont tenté, puisque son sainteté particulière était pour eux une tentation impossible de résister. A proprement parler, ce sont les démons qui devraient nous apitoyer, parce qu’ils ont été tentés par Saint Antoine et ils ont tombé, et il lui-même n’a pas tombé.”

Samuel Butler

St Anthony tempted the devils quite as much as they tempted him; for his peculiar sanctity was a greater temptation to tempt him than they could stand. Strictly speaking, it was the devils who were the more to be pitied, for they were led up by St Anthony to be tempted and fell, whereas St Anthony did not fall.
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Samuel Butler Citations

“La vie n’est pas une devinette qu’on doit résoudre, mais plutôt un nœud gordien que sera coupé tôt ou tard.”

Samuel Butler

Life is not so much a riddle to be read as much as a Gordian knot that will get cut sooner or later.
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vie

“La vie est une superstition. Pourtant, les superstitions ont quelque utilité: la coquille de l’escargot est une superstition, puisque la limace va très bien sans elle; mais un escargot sans coquille ne serait pas une limace, sauf qu’il avait aussi l’indifférence de la limace vis-à´vis la coquille.”

Samuel Butler

Life is a superstition. But superstitions are not without their value. The snail's shell is a superstition, slugs have no shells and thrive just as well. But a snail without a shell would not be a slug unless it had also the slug's indifference to a shell.
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indifférence , vie

“C'est facile d'avoir des avis plus justes quand tout le monde les a déjà.”

Samuel Butler

It's easy to have juster views when everybody else has them.
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monde

“Il a été souvent remarqué, je crois, qu'une poule n'était seulement que le moyen qu'avait un œuf de fabriquer un autre œuf.”

Samuel Butler

It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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Samuel Butler: Citations en anglais

“No one with any sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute.”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 10

“When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.”

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Samuel Butler

Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.”

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Samuel Butler

Thought and Word, viii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“I am the enfant terrible of literature and science.”

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Samuel Butler

Myself
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XII - The Enfant Terrible of Literature

“We take it that when the state of things shall have arrived which we have been above attempting to describe, man will have become to the machine what the horse and the dog are to man. He will continue to exist, nay even to improve, and will be probably better off in his state of domestication under the beneficent rule of the machines than he is in his present wild state. We treat our horses, dogs, cattle and sheep, on the whole, with great kindness, we give them whatever experience teaches us to be best for them, and there can be no doubt that our use of meat has added to the happiness of the lower animals far more than it has detracted from it; in like manner it is reasonable to suppose that the machines will treat us kindly, for their existence is as dependent upon ours as ours is upon the lower animals.”

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Samuel Butler

Darwin Among the Machines
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part III - The Germs of Erewhon and of Life and Habit

“There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.”

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Samuel Butler

The Defeat of Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

“All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.”

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Samuel Butler

Development
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.”

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Samuel Butler livre The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 6

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.”

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Samuel Butler

Portraits
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“To be is to think and to be thinkable. To live is to continue thinking and to remember having done so.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak stock.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

Knowledge is Power
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

“Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal.”

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Samuel Butler

Honesty
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

“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?”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 23

“It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept.”

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Samuel Butler

Colour http://books.google.com/books?id=JHguFYrTEQ0C&q=%22It+is+said+of+money+that+it+is+more+easily+made+than+kept+and+this+is+true+of+many+things+such+as+friendship+and+even+life+itself+is+more+easily+got+than+kept%22&pg=PA141#v=onepage
Often paraphrased as "Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part IX - A Painter's Views on Painting

“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.”

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Samuel Butler livre The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

“Life and death are balanced as it were on the edge of a razor.”

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Samuel Butler

The Iliad of Homer, Rendered into English Prose (1898), Book X

“They [my thoughts] are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“They were gentlemen in the full sense of the word; and what has one not said in saying this?”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 17

“All eating is a kind of proselytising — a kind of dogmatising — a maintaining that the eater’s way of looking at things is better than the eatee’s.”

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Samuel Butler

Eating and Proselytising
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VI - Mind and Matter

“He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one’s teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.”

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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