Writer Quotes by Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

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

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

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

Spare the rod and spoil the child.

— Samuel Butler

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

— Samuel Butler

“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

If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

“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

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

— Samuel Butler

A man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

— Samuel Butler

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

“The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.”

— Samuel Butler