“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.” — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
“Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.” — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
And, after all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
The phrase 'unconscious humor' is the one contribution I have made to the current literature of the day. — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
“I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific… — Samuel Butler Copy Share Image
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“we must judge men not so much by what they, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know. — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“Having, then, once introduced an element of inconsistency into his system, he was far too consistent not to be inconsistent consistently, and he lapsed… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion… — Samuel Butler Copy Share
“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.” — Samuel Butler Copy Share
