Samuel Butler Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Samuel Butler's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Poet Samuel Butler's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 70 quotes on this page collected since February 8, 1612! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4367, Delphi Classics
  • When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

    Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.121, ReadHowYouWant.com
  • Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.

    Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”
  • A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

    'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 14
  • The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

    Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks”
  • They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4166, Delphi Classics
  • He was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.

  • The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

    1872 Erewhon.
  • The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4218, Delphi Classics
  • I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

    Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”
  • The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

    'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 17
  • People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.2084, Delphi Classics
  • Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

    'The Way of All Flesh' (1903) ch. 5
  • He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

    Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.277, The Floating Press
  • Friends are like money, easier made than kept.

    Samuel Butler (1951). “Samuel Butler's notebooks”
  • Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

  • The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.

    Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.30, ReadHowYouWant.com
  • If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

    Samuel Butler (1950). “The Essential Samuel Butler”, London : J. Cape
  • I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

    Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.230, The Floating Press
  • A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4240, Delphi Classics
  • In practice it is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is sometimes extremely difficult to find this out.

    Samuel Butler (1926). “The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler: The notebooks of Samuel Butler”
  • Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

  • The course of true anything never does run smooth.

    Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”
  • Spare the rod and spoil the child.

    'Hudibras' pt. 2 (1664), canto 1, l. 843
  • The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

    Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.197, The Floating Press
  • Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4253, Delphi Classics
  • How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?

    Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.43, The Floating Press
  • The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without.

    Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4093, Delphi Classics
  • There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

    Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.374, The Floating Press
  • Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.

    Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Large Edition”, p.24, ReadHowYouWant.com
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 70 quotes from the Poet Samuel Butler, starting from February 8, 1612! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!