Samuel Butler Quotes

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Samuel Butler

Profession : Poet

Birth : December 4, 1835

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

Samuel Butler

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

Samuel Butler

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Samuel Butler

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Samuel Butler

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Samuel Butler

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

Samuel Butler

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

Samuel Butler

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Samuel Butler

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.

Samuel Butler

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.

Samuel Butler

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.

Samuel Butler

Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.

Samuel Butler

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

Samuel Butler

There is no bore like a clever bore.

Samuel Butler

And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.

Samuel Butler

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Samuel Butler

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Samuel Butler

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.

Samuel Butler

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

Samuel Butler