Samuel Butler Quotes

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Samuel Butler

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1835

God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.

Samuel Butler

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

Samuel Butler

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Samuel Butler

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

Samuel Butler

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

Samuel Butler

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

Samuel Butler

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Samuel Butler

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

Samuel Butler

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

Samuel Butler

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

The want of money is the root of all evil.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.

Samuel Butler

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

Samuel Butler