Samuel Butler

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

— Samuel Butler

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

— Samuel Butler

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

— Samuel Butler

We think as we do, mainly because other people think so

— Samuel Butler

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.

— Samuel Butler

Let man be true and every god a liar.

— Samuel Butler

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

— Samuel Butler

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science

— Samuel Butler

Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

— Samuel Butler

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

— Samuel Butler

“Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

— Samuel Butler

There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.

— Samuel Butler

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

— Samuel Butler

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

— Samuel Butler

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

— Samuel Butler

“We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.”

— Samuel Butler

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does…

— Samuel Butler

“Let it suffice that George Pontifex did not consider himself fortunate, and he who does not consider himself fortunate is unfortunate.”

— Samuel Butler

It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to…

— Samuel Butler

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an over-praised season delightful if it happens to be a favored one, but…

— Samuel Butler

“Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who…

— Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow…

— Samuel Butler

There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.

— Samuel Butler

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

“a good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not generally followed by ill consequences to…

— Samuel Butler

Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to…

— Samuel Butler

“It is hard enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the relative happiness or…

— Samuel Butler

You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself…

— Samuel Butler

Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter…

— Samuel Butler

“I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a…

— Samuel Butler

It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but…

— Samuel Butler

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever…

— Samuel Butler

“Pleasure, after all, is a safer guide than either right or duty. For hard as it is to know what gives us…

— Samuel Butler

“I tell you, Edward, said my father with some severity, we must judge men not so much by what they do, as…

— Samuel Butler

“I remember one incident which bears upon this part of the treatise. The gentleman who gave it to me had asked to…

— Samuel Butler

“I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent…

— Samuel Butler

“certain kind of good fortune generally attends self-made men to the last. It is their children of the first, or first and…

— Samuel Butler

“Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. Even if they are unhappy - very unhappy…

— Samuel Butler

“So engrained in the human heart is the desire to believe that some people really do know what they say they know,…

— Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

— Samuel Butler