Samuel Butler Quotes on Man (30 Quotes)


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

    Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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

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

    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.

    A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

    Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.

    The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

    When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

    We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

    Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

    He that imposes an oath makes it, Not he that for convenience takes it Then how can any man be said To break an oath he never made.

    The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.

    They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'

    All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

    Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

    Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.

    Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

    For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure tangible material prosperity in this world is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

    Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.

    If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole story is not profitless from first to last, it comes to this that a man should back his own opinion against the world s.

    One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

    Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

    Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

    To do great work a man must be very idle As well as very industrious.

    I've known him for a long time, ... He's always been a man of integrity, always been a man of the community and the needs of the community, and the black community is going to stand behind him.

    Ay me what perils do environ The man that meddles with cold iron.

    There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second.

    Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.


    More Samuel Butler Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - World - God - People - Vice & Virtue - Money & Wealth - Christianity - Truth - Youth - Work & Career - Literature - Good & Evil - Death & Dying - Mind - Sin - Love - Art - Gold - View All Samuel Butler Quotations

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