Quotes By Samuel Butler

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.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

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.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Be virtuous and you will be vicious.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

Opinions have vested interests just as men have.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.