Quotes By Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel Butler
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.
Samuel Butler
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
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.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
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
Our ideas are for the most part like bad sixpences, and we spend our lives trying to pass them on one another.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
Samuel Butler
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.
Samuel Butler