Samuel Butler Quotes
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The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
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God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
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What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
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It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
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It is tact that is golden, not silence.
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In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
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Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
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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.
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My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
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When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
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In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
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The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
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For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
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Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
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Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
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When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
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We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
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Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.