Samuel Butler Quotes

Author Image

Samuel Butler

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1835

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

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

Samuel Butler

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

Samuel Butler

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.

Samuel Butler

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

Samuel Butler

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Samuel Butler

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

Samuel Butler

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

Samuel Butler

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Samuel Butler

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Samuel Butler

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

Samuel Butler

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Samuel Butler

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

Samuel Butler

The history of art is the history of revivals.

Samuel Butler

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Samuel Butler

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

Samuel Butler

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

Samuel Butler