Always eat grapes downward – that is eat the best grapes first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last. If you eat the other way, you will not have a good grape in the lot.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Eating
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Food
An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Ideas
The tendency of modem science is to reduce proof to absurdity by continually reducing absurdity to proof.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Decisions
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Cheerfulness
Going away: I can generally bear the separation, but i don’t like the leave-taking.
—Samuel Butler
The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure-tangible material prosperity in this world-is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to ascetism.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Pleasure, Virtue
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Health, Sickness, Disease
The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Crime, Criminals
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every living organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Motivation, Progress
The worst of governments are always the most changeable, and cost the people dearest.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Government
It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Thought
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Adversity
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Eating, Food
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Regret
When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness.
—Samuel Butler
It has come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Christianity
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Humility, Success, Loss, Losers, Losing
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Evil
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Work, Idleness
God cannot alter the past, that is why he is obliged to connive at the existence of historians.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: History, Past, Historians
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Common Sense
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy—but he who has shown the better temper.
—Samuel Butler
Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Youth, Seasons
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Conviction, Men
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Pride, Ignorance, Vanity
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.
—Samuel Butler
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Agreement, Opinions, Opinion
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Conscience
I went to the Bach Choir concert and heard Mozart’s Requiem. I did not rise warmly to it. Then I heard an extract from Parsifal which I disliked very much. If Bach wriggles, Wagner writhes…
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Music
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Innocence, Justice
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Medicine
The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Opinion, Man, Public opinion
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Logic, Reason
Some people seem compelled by unkind fate to parental servitude for life. There is no form of penal service worse than this.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Family
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