Quotes By Samuel Butler

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

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 it most easy for us to forgive them.

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

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 paying much attention to him.

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.

Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.

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 and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.