Samuel Butler (novelist) quotes - page 12

All eating is a kind of proselytising - a kind of dogmatising - a maintaining that the eater's way of looking at things is better than the eatee's. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one's teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a great criminal. He should have cut himself adrift from society, and yet not be without society. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
But the main argument on which they rely is that of economy: for they know that they will sooner gain their end by appealing to men's pockets, in which they have generally something of their own, than to their heads, which contain for the most part little but borrowed or stolen property. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
In the highest consciousness there is still unconsciousness, in the lowest unconsciousness there is still consciousness. If there is no consciousness there is no thing, or nothing. To understand perfectly would be to cease to understand at all. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
"Plants,” said he, "show no sign of interesting themselves in human affairs. We shall never get a rose to understand that five times seven are thirty-five, and there is no use in talking to an oak about fluctuations in the price of stocks. Hence we say that the oak and the rose are unintelligent, and on finding that they do not understand our business conclude that they do not understand their own. But what can a creature who talks in this way know about intelligence? Which shows greater signs of intelligence? He, or the rose and oak? View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and nothing else. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The composer is seldom a great theorist; the theorist is never a great composer. Each is equally fatal to and essential in the other. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The true laws of God are the laws of our own well-being. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
"To be born,” they say, "is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out an through. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Words impede and either kill, or are killed by, perfect thought; but they are, as a scaffolding, useful, if not indispensable, for the building up of imperfect thought and helping to perfect it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least obviously driven to determine our course, in those cases where the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of advantage appears most doubtful. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
I doubt whether any angel would find me very entertaining. As for myself, if ever I do entertain one it will have to be unawares. When people entertain others without an introduction they generally turn out more like devils than angels. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
When he had left the room, I mused over the conversation which had just taken place between us, but I could make nothing out of it, except that it argued an even greater perversity of mental vision than I had been yet prepared for. And this made me wretched; for I cannot bear having much to do with people who think differently from myself. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar - He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Life is the gathering of waves to a head, at death they break into a million fragments each one of which, however, is absorbed at once into the sea of life and helps to form a later generation which comes rolling on till it too breaks. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
We are so far identical with our ancestors and our contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
God does not intend people, and does not like people, to be too good. He likes them neither too good nor too bad, but a little too bad is more venial with him than a little too good. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)