Top 244 Quotes & Sayings by Samuel Butler
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British poet Samuel Butler.
Last updated on December 25, 2024.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
All truth is not to be told at all times.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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.
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
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