“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”

On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIII - Unprofessional Sermons

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and th…" by Samuel Butler?

Samuel Butler232

novelist 1835–1902

Related quotes

“The evil into which these philosophers have fallen is greater than that from which they sought to escape, because they refuse to say that God neglects or forgets a thing, and yet they maintain that His knowledge is imperfect, that He is ignorant of what is going on here on earth, that He does not perceive it.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.16

“2454. If any one giveth thee excessive Praises more than can handsomely belong to thee, thou art to think of him, that he taketh thee for vain and credulous, and easy to be deceived, and effectually a Fool.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“You can have no greater sign of confirmed pride than when you think you are humble enough.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

Source: A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728), Ch. XV

“An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.”

Jerome Lawrence Inherit the Wind

Source: Inherit the Wind

“Wisdom is, I suppose, the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Fourfold Treasure (1871) No. 991 http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0991.htm

“You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: Jayber Crow

“In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education

“You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

“Economic man and the Calvinist Christian sing to each other like voices in a fugue. The Calvinist stands alone before an almost merciless God; no human agency can help him; his church is a means to political and social organization rather than a bridge to deity, for no priest can have greater knowledge of the divine way than he himself; no friend can console him — in fact, he should distrust all men; in the same fashion, Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

Source: Matthew Arnold (1939), Ch. 8: The Failure of the Middle Class

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Samuel Butler232

Related quotes

Related topics