Samuel Butler Quotes

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

Man, unlike the animals, has never learned that the sole purpose of life is to enjoy it.

The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

Men of Science. If they are worthy of the name they are indeed about God's path and about his bed and spying out all his ways.

The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.

Friends are like money, easier made than kept.

He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.

Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.

There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule.

Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognized for some time.

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.

Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.