1.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
2.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Samuel Butler
3.
If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
Samuel Butler
4.
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
Samuel Butler
5.
Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.
Samuel Butler
6.
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
7.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
8.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler
9.
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.
Samuel Butler
10.
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
Samuel Butler
11.
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.
Samuel Butler
12.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler
13.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler
14.
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.
Samuel Butler
15.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
16.
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler
17.
He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler
18.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler
19.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
20.
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Samuel Butler
21.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler
22.
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler
23.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler
24.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Samuel Butler
25.
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Samuel Butler
26.
Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Samuel Butler
27.
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
Samuel Butler
28.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler
29.
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler
30.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler
31.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Samuel Butler
32.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
33.
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel Butler
34.
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
Samuel Butler
35.
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Samuel Butler
36.
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Samuel Butler
37.
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.
Samuel Butler
38.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
39.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler
40.
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
Samuel Butler
41.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler
42.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel Butler
43.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel Butler
44.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Samuel Butler
45.
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
Samuel Butler
46.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler
47.
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel Butler
48.
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.
Samuel Butler
49.
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler
50.
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.
Samuel Butler