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


Samuel Butler

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The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
SAMUEL BUTLER All animals except man know that the ultimate point of life is to enjoy it. -Samuel Butler.
SAMUEL BUTLER London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers of the Empire are irresistibly drained
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE SR. Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only ga...
ARISTOTLE London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly dr...
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not pres...
ROBERT BENCHLEY It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the s...
TODD RUNDGREN Everyone has their own different life experiences which make them who they are. No two people's ...
KESHIA KNIGHT PULLIAM Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an...
EDWARD ALBEE If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan...
JIM ROHN People are going to come into your life that need you, and being there for them makes the day worth ...
AMY GRANT Music written by teams makes the authorship of a piece indistinct. Could it be that when hearing a s...
DAVID BYRNE That's kind of the theme of Own the Night. It's about those nights that are so memorable you...
CHARLES KELLEY I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing p...
ROBERT BENCHLEY Loft living is the antithesis of suburban domesticity, if only because the open spaces don't eas...
VIRGINIA POSTREL Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by ...
STEVE JOBS From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life:
“In a slum somewhere in India
As...
THE PROPHET OF LIFE Maya Angelou had the ability to glean inspiration out of pain.
THE PROPHET OF LIFE If we cannot always be entirely sane in our relationships, the kindest thing we can do for those who...
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funer...
TERRY PRATCHETT I see genres as generating sets of rules or conventions that are only interesting when they are subv...
MAL PEET He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed ani...
SUSAN HUBBARD If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they ...
SARAH FIELDING All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life. Then, even the holie...
MING-DAO DENG For though to smatter ends of Greek Or Latin be the rhetoric Of pedants counted, and vain-glor...
SAMUEL BUTLER (1) But race is not the only theme in the play. It's also about dignity, about growing old, about living...
GREGORY MAGYAR Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the gene...
CLARA ZETKIN Life is short, and that's why, I don't test people; because we all fail tests sometimes, but that is...
C. JOYBELL C. You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That's what I do. The...
STEVEN WRIGHT Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I ...
OSCAR WILDE Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those...
ARISTOTLE Reading literature remains a civilising activity, no matter that it's literature in which people...
HOWARD JACOBSON Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! Th...
PEACE PILGRIM Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them, you have to take care of them! Th...
PILGRIMS I mean, if a person acts irresponsibly in his own life, he will pay the consequences. And it's n...
PAT ROBERTSON Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into whi...
ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into w...
ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into whi...
ARTHUR SOMERS RACHE You only have one go at life, which is thrilling. Only you can make yourself into who you want to be...
JOANNA LUMLEY Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life's dee...
TONY ROBBINS While it's really hard to do, at the same time, I'm escaping my body, which I really want to...
LAURA HILLENBRAND Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those...
ARISTOTLE The needs of babies and toddlers were constant and drained the life out my sense of self and my fami...
MIKA BRZEZINSKI If you pour everything you have into this life, this world, which is temporary and fading, you're je...
CRAIG GROESCHEL Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make th...
MAYA LIN The problem of sexism is getting better, but I don't know if it's getting better fast enough...
AJA NAOMI KING Our notions of self-determination are, on the whole, something of a myth. We are governed almost exc...
JASPER FFORDE Before you dive in head first, make sure the water is not shallow.
KATHERINE DIVOLIS Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can und...
PETER L. BERGER The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author hims...
HENRY MILLER That's the way I work and one day I won't have the energy to do it, so I think it's alwa...
MARC ALMOND Men have two greatest fears: the first fear is the fear of being needed, and the second fear is the ...
C. JOYBELL C. Creativity is not just thinking outside the box but living outside it.
VICTOR SHAMAS Bad reviews are the bane of an author's post-publication existence.
NIGEL HAMILTON It is a common assumption that a person's good works will get them into Heaven.
MONICA JOHNSON May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Architecture is a science arising out of many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learn...
VITRUVIUS How much more must this be so in my own case for I am conscious not only of the great names and achi...
CECIL FRANK POWELL Samuel Beckett's estate will not license productions of his plays that are not performed as writ...
TERRY TEACHOUT Illustrations can be a big window: a looking glass into the author's imagination.
TONY DITERLIZZI Put paying your dues and all that puts so much into being a success. You have an understanding of wh...
TAYLOR KITSCH Writing the story of their own life allows the author to parse their story into examinable segments ...
KILROY J. OLDSTER I don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians,...
WILLIAM SHIRLEY Most of us... are simply just trying to get through the day. And wait for those times in their life ...
CAMPBELL SCOTT I'm an actor, and I keep observing people and their reactions to figure out what they are thinki...
PREITY ZINTA I'd rather be on the ground than under
To feel the heavy rain and the thunder.
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets...
DEREK JACOBI Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absur...
ALBERT CAMUS I love 'Glee' so much. It just works - it's on the edge of ridiculous.
ADAM GARCIA "We each have a choice, we can continue with the same chapter of our life, or begin a new one. You a...
TOM BAKER AKA THE PONDERING MAN There are two sorts of hypocrites; ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external r...
JONATHAN EDWARDS Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH You know, this is a business where only 15% make a living wage and only 9% of those are women. But I...
MARCIA WALLACE There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one...
ALAN PATON Life is not a true or false question.
REBECCA MCKINSEY We were the outliers: my mother was the only Western woman (khawagayya, in Egyptian Arabic) to have ...
SHEREEN EL FEKI President Obama knows that wars are not to be entered into lightly; he knows that overseas conflicts...
LINCOLN CHAFEE I have represented farmers in federal court during the Iowa farm crisis. A farmer from Butler County...
BRUCE BRALEY Honestly, I don't listen to nobody else's music but my own. It's kind of like sports to ...
LIL WAYNE The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events th...
CHARLES CALEB COLTON become as much a part of their books as do the readers, and they escape into the worlds they have cr...
ROBERT VAUGHAN When the living gets unburdened with needs and desires, the life becomes simple and easy to carry.
SHASHI And men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins
C.S. LEWIS All of the problems we're facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It's calle...
MICHELE BACHMANN It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses,...
MARY RITTER BEARD [My works are] an imitation of my own past and present and of my own creative vitality as I experien...
BARBARA HEPWORTH Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Money has changed today's black athletes. Those who have the ability as African men to bring a c...
JIM BROWN I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
OSCAR WILDE Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or au...
HANS-ULRICH OBRIST The life of an actor is not filled with limousines and talk-show interviews. I've moved crates o...
VINCENT RODRIGUEZ III I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.
BARTON GELLMAN When I started making music, I was so heavy into the hyphy movement. That's something you only k...
G-EAZY I'm living to the edges of my fingernails, using everything I have. It's impossible for me t...
ARUNDHATI ROY It's somewhat of a normal procedure sometimes when you have a knee drained... so long as it'...
JAMES WORTHY It is only persons of firmness that can have real gentleness. Those who appear gentle are, in genera...
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD We can never make ourselves better by trying... praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, p...
JOYCE MEYER ...[T]he three greatest works are those of JOSEPH DEVLIN People think we're only into big buildings, but iconic houses have always been the real interest...
ERIC TRUMP

More Samuel Butler

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 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 A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is a...
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