Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler was a turn of the century writer (1835-1902). He was a free thinker, meaning he did not fit neatly into any particular category of thought. What came to be known as his greatest influential work was a novel that he would not publish so as to protect his family. It was published postmortem. I have been enjoying many of his quotes, thought I would share a few of my favorites.....

"Be virtuous and you will be vicious. "

"Neither irony or sarcasm is argument. "

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

"A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends."

"A skillful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war. "

"All truth is not to be told at all times."

"Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both."

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

"Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence."

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

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

"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper."

"It is tact that is golden, not silence."

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

"Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine."

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

"Life is one long process of getting tired."

"Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him."

"Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers."

"One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once."

"Opinions have vested interests just as men have."

"Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure. "

"The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor."

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

"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too."

"There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come."

"To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him."

"Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know. "

"We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them. "

"We are not won by arguments that we can analyze but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself. "