Samuel Butler Quotes

241 quotes in 1938 categories

• Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must…
• Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is…
• If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before…
• Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the…
• Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to…
• The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good…
• 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…
• Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in…
• Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
• The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
• The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
• Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
• Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
• Life is one long process of getting tired.
• A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
• It is tact that is golden, not silence.
• Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
• Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
• Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
• Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

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