Samuel(novelistButler (1835 – 1902)
British satirist, best known for his novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh.
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?
It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”
All eating is a kind of proselytising - a kind of dogmatising — a maintaining that the eater’s way of looking at things is better than the eatee’s.
Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ — very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.
Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals’ and plants’ business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.
Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.
Art has no end in view save the emphasising and recording in the most effective way some strongly felt interest or affection.
One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.
Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.
All we know is, that even the humblest dead may live along after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doing it in the bodies and memories of these that come after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament. It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life — although we know it not.
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
To love God is to have good health, good looks, good sense, experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in hand.
A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.
Many, if not most, good ideas die young — mainly from neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left to shift for itself.
Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room
The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;
Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught,
Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth:
O God! O Montreal!
Life is the gathering of waves to a head, at death they break into a million fragments each one of which, however, is absorbed at once into the sea of life and helps to form a later generation which comes rolling on till it too breaks.