Quotes By Samuel Butler

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.

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

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

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.

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Let every man be true and every god a liar.

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

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.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

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 make the best and not the worst of them.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.