Famous Quotes

Quotes by Samuel Butler

• Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
• Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
• 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.
• Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
• Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
• Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
• 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.
• Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
• Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
• Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
• People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
• Priests are not men of the world it is not intended that they should be and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
• Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
• Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
• The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
• The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
• The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
• 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.
• The history of art is the history of revivals.
• The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
• 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.
• The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
• The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
• The want of money is the root of all evil.
• The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
• The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
• Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
• There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
• There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
• They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
• Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
• 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.
• To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
• To himself everyone is immortal he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
• To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
• Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
• We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
• We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.