Samuel Butler Quotes

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Samuel Butler

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1835

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

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.

Samuel Butler

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

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Samuel Butler

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.

Samuel Butler

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

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

Samuel Butler

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Samuel Butler

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

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

Samuel Butler

All truth is not to be told at all times.

Samuel Butler

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Samuel Butler

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

The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor.

Samuel Butler

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

Samuel Butler

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Samuel Butler

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

Samuel Butler

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.

Samuel Butler

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Samuel Butler

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Samuel Butler