Samuel Butler Quotes
-
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
-
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
-
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
-
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
-
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
-
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
-
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
-
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
-
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
-
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
-
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
-
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
-
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
-
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
-
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
-
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
-
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
-
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
-
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
-
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
-
The history of art is the history of revivals.
-
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
-
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.