Samuel(novelistButler (1835 – 1902)
British satirist, best known for his novels Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
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.
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.
A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.
To love God is to have good health, good looks, good sense, experience, a kindly nature and a fair balance of cash in hand.
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
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.
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.
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.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.