Samuel Butler quote: "A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind."

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
SAMUEL BUTLER

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to di...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anyth...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The advantage of doing one's praising to oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in t...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart's Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I hea...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of r...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The money men make lives after them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The want of money is the root of all evil.
SAMUEL BUTLER

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to r...
SAMUEL BUTLER

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
SAMUEL BUTLER

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is one long process of getting tired.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage -- but they are also no less invalid...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does...
SAMUEL BUTLER

When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
SAMUEL BUTLER

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
SAMUEL BUTLER

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging h...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

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

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer l...
SAMUEL BUTLER

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wa...
SAMUEL BUTLER

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

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

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. A...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more s...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life, they urge, would be intolerable if men were to be guided in all they did by reason and reason ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.
SAMUEL BUTLER

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is tact that is golden, not silence.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
SAMUEL BUTLER

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through eithe...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religi...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to ap...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it b...
SAMUEL BUTLER

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fightin...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword
SAMUEL BUTLER

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond it...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he pro...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.
SAMUEL BUTLER

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any m...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A hen is only a egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obl...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he no...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and pro...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as h...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men t...
SAMUEL BUTLER

For every why he had a wherefore.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

If there is any moral in Christianity, if there is anything to be learned from it, if the whole stor...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.
SAMUEL BUTLER

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when intr...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the othe...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy -- but he who has s...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he...
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came f...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not se...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not bein...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

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

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Spontaneity is only a term for man's ignorance of the gods
SAMUEL BUTLER

To be at all is to be religious more or less
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword--those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The extremes of glory and of shame, Like east and west, become the same No Indian prince has to his ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underg...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
SAMUEL BUTLER

We payt a person the complement of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is the art of drawing sufficent conclusions from insufficient premises.
SAMUEL BUTLER

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Independence is essential for permanent but fatal to immediate success.
SAMUEL BUTLER

All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it. -Samuel Butler.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, but the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to...
SAMUEL BUTLER

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Silence is not always tact, and it is tact that is golden, not silence.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

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

Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and des...
SAMUEL BUTLER

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or a...
SAMUEL BUTLER

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything els...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.
SAMUEL BUTLER

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that yo...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely re...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficaci...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent...
SAMUEL BUTLER

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the m...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ h...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has sh...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's di...
SAMUEL BUTLER

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and...
SAMUEL BUTLER

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfyin...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Words are clothes that thoughts wear
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

The three most important parts a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money and his religiou...
SAMUEL BUTLER

All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every...
SAMUEL BUTLER

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being good, clever, or amiable.
SAMUEL BUTLER

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
SAMUEL BUTLER

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has wri...
SAMUEL BUTLER

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not enjoy it any m...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man ma...
SAMUEL BUTLER

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
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 tr...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Neither have they hearts to stay. Nor wit enough to run away.
SAMUEL BUTLER

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises
SAMUEL BUTLER

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised t...
SAMUEL BUTLER

I consider being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill.
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
SAMUEL BUTLER

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and th...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a tr...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in th...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.
SAMUEL BUTLER

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one's destruction or their use. A standard both to buy an...
SAMUEL BUTLER

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

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, i...
SAMUEL BUTLER

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case; God ha...
SAMUEL BUTLER

The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched, And count their chickens ere they're hatched
SAMUEL BUTLER

People are lucky and unlucky...according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been ...
SAMUEL BUTLER

Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat; Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate
SAMUEL BUTLER

Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast Outrun the constable at last
SAMUEL BUTLER

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

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Samuel Butler

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

Samuel Butler

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