Samuel Butler Quotes

Author Image

Samuel Butler

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1835

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Samuel Butler

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

Samuel Butler

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Samuel Butler

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

Samuel Butler

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Samuel Butler

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Samuel Butler

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

Samuel Butler

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.

Samuel Butler

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Samuel Butler

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

Samuel Butler

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Samuel Butler

If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

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.

Samuel Butler

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

Samuel Butler

The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Samuel Butler

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Samuel Butler

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.

Samuel Butler