Samuel Butler

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season

— Samuel Butler

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

— Samuel Butler

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

— Samuel Butler

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

— Samuel Butler

For every why he had a wherefore

— Samuel Butler

The course of true anything never does run smooth.

— Samuel Butler

History is a bucket of ashes.

— Samuel Butler

Life is a long process of getting tired

— Samuel Butler

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

— Samuel Butler

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.

— Samuel Butler

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

— Samuel Butler

The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

— Samuel Butler

He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

— Samuel Butler

“Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”

— Samuel Butler

“All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.”

— Samuel Butler

Love is a boy, by poets styled, Then spare the rod, and spoil the child

— Samuel Butler

And, after all, the Athanasian Creed is light and comprehensible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.

— Samuel Butler

Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great…

— Samuel Butler

“tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate, while…

— Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but…

— Samuel Butler

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and…

— Samuel Butler

“It is far safer to know too little than too much.  People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called…

— Samuel Butler

“For as whipp'd tops and bandied balls, The learned hold, are animals; So horses they affirm to be Mere engines made by…

— Samuel Butler

It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to…

— Samuel Butler

“We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble--no matter how often we…

— Samuel Butler

“For society indeed of all sorts, except of course that of a few intimate friends, he had an unconquerable aversion. "I always…

— Samuel Butler

“we must judge men not so much by what they, as by what they make us feel that they have it in…

— Samuel Butler

He could foretell whats'ever was By consequence to come to pass. As Death of Great Men, Alterations, Diseases, Battels, Inundations. All this…

— 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

There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the…

— Samuel Butler

There are two great rules in life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can in…

— 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

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

— 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

“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

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

— 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

All truth is not to be told at all times.

— Samuel Butler