People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Christianity
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Food, Eating
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Right, Perfection
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
To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Life, Living, Love, Instincts
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Law
I’ve heard old cunning stagers Say, fools for arguments use wagers.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Arguments
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Opinion, Agreement, Opinions
The world will always be governed by self-interest: we should not try to stop this: we should try and make the self-interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Self-Discovery
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
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Arguments, Argument
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Writing
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Conscience
Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Morals
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Common Sense
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 always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Money
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Fear, Anxiety
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Success is not everything
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: Criminals, Crime
It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held, and not in the dogma or want of dogma, that the danger lies.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Change
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Reputation
He’d undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man’s no horse. He’d prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a Lord may be an owl, A calf an Alderman, a goose a Justice, And rooks, Committee-men or Trustees.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Arguments
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
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: Virtue, Pleasure
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Vice
Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Decisions, Indecision
Silence is not always tact, but it is tact that is golden, not silence.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Tact
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Lies, Deception/Lying
Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Flying
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Genius
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