Quotes by Samuel Butler

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.

Samuel Butler

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Samuel Butler

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

Samuel Butler

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

Samuel Butler

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Samuel Butler

Peter remained on friendly terms with Christ notwithstanding Christ's having healed his mother-in-law.

Samuel Butler

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.

Samuel Butler

The greatest 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.

Samuel Butler

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

Samuel Butler

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Samuel Butler

Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed ere long into an amiable indifferentism which to outward appearance differed but little from the i...

Samuel Butler

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

Samuel Butler

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.

Samuel Butler

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.

Samuel Butler

Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

Samuel Butler

Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics.

Samuel Butler

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

Samuel Butler

Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

Samuel Butler

Words are clothes that thoughts wear

Samuel Butler

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

Samuel Butler

To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

Samuel Butler