A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Animals, Perspective
Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Feelings, Life
The money men make lives after them.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Money
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
Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
—Samuel Butler
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Arguments, Argument
Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Heaven
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Parents, Parenting
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Work, Idleness
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Law
Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Science
The foundations of morality are like all other foundations: If you dig too much about them the superstructure will come tumbling down.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Morals
A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Boredom
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Excess
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
The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Success is not everything
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Conscience
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Dogs, Fools
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
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Wisdom
Logic and consistency are luxuries for the gods and the lower animals.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Logic
When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Water
There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception to the general rule.
—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: Seasons, Youth
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
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Reason, Thoughts, Thought
Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Words, Promises
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- James Baldwin American Novelist, Social Critic
- William Temple English Theologian
- Paul Goodman American Novelist, Essayist
- Silas Weir Mitchell American Physician, Writer
- Henry Eyring American Chemist
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