Samuel(novelistButler (1835 – 1902)
British satirist, best known for his novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh.
I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea.
It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not — and in the nature of things never can?
To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.
Time is the only true purgatory.
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.
Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.
The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.
If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.
The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.
All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.
The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.
All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.
No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak stock.
The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar —
He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs.