Samuel Butler Quotes (305 Quotes)

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

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.

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten with gold, still less can it be gotten without it.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Who thought he 'd won The field as certain as a gun.

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.

Nick Machiavel had neer a trick, Though he gave his name to our Old Nick.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

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.

Quoth she, 'I 've heard old cunning stagers Say fools for arguments use wagers.'

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

That vice pays homage to virtue is notorious we call it hypocrisy

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist instead of a stick.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

Each window like a pill'ry appears, With heads thrust thro' nail'd by the ears.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

Oaths are but words, and words but wind.

Nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.

There's but a twinkling of a star Between a man of peace and war.

Still amorous and fond and billing, Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.

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

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

For all a rhetorician's rules teach nothing but to name his tools.

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

We grant, although he had much wit, He was very shy of using it.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

And wisely tell what hour o' the day The clock does strike, by algebra.

Some force whole regions, in despite O' geography, to change their site Make former times shake hands with latter, And that which was before come after. But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think 's sufficient at one time.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.

While the honour thou hast got Is spick and span new.

Love is a boy by poets styl'd Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.

Friend Ralph, thou hast Outrun the constable at last.

With crosses, relics, crucifixes, Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes, The tools of working out salvation By mere mechanic operation.