Samuel Butler citations (242 citations, Page 7)

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

“God does not intend people, and does not like people, to be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but a little too bad is more venial with him than a little too good.”

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Samuel Butler

Vice and Virtue, iii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“In art, never try to find out anything, or try to learn anything until the not knowing it has come to be a nuisance to you for some time. Then you will remember it, but not otherwise. Let knowledge importune you before you will hear it. Our schools and universities go on the precisely opposite system.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

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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.”

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Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“Time is the only true purgatory.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“The devil tempted Christ; yes, but it was Christ who tempted the devil to tempt him.”

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Samuel Butler

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.com/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+devil+tempted+Christ+yes+but+it+was+Christ+who+tempted+the+devil+to+tempt+him%22&pg=PA76#v=onepage, compiled and edited by A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 76

“Many, if not most, good ideas die young — mainly from neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left to shift for itself.”

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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

“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.”

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Samuel Butler livre The Way of All Flesh

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

“Sin is like a mountain with two aspects according to whether it is viewed before or after it has been reached: yet both aspects are real.”

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Samuel Butler

Sin
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

“My notes always grow longer if I shorten them. I mean the process of compression makes them more pregnant and they breed new notes.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.”

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Samuel Butler

The World
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIV - The Life of the World to Come

“If people like being deceived — and this can hardly be doubted — there can rarely have been a time during which they can have had more of the wish than now. The literary, scientific and religious worlds vie with one another in trying to gratify the public.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“It is hard upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the duckling?”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 19

“To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra.”

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Samuel Butler

Posthumous Life, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIV - The Life of the World to Come

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”

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Samuel Butler

Life, ix
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?

“It is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Erewhonians that when they profess themselves to be quite certain about any matter, and avow it as a base on which they are to build a system of practice, they seldom quite believe in it. If they smell a rat about the precincts of a cherished institution, they will always stop their noses to it if they can.”

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Samuel Butler

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 18

“The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable; absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is, let alone the dullnesses of it and the pomposities of it.”

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Samuel Butler

Vice and Virtue, ii
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

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

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Samuel Butler

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

“Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

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

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Samuel Butler

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

“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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“By a merciful dispensation of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration.”

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Samuel Butler

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“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."”

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Samuel Butler

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.”

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Samuel Butler

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

“The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.”

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Samuel Butler livre The Way of All Flesh

Ch. 39 http://books.google.com/books?id=wZAEAQAAIAAJ&q=%22The+best+liar+is+he+who+makes+the+smallest+amount+of+lying+go+the+longest+way%22&pg=PA190#v=onepage
The Way of All Flesh (1903)