Samuel Butler Quotes

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.

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

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

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

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

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.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

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.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

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

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.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

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

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

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

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

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

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

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

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.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

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

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

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

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

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

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

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.

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.

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

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.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

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

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

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

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

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.