Famous Quotes by Samuel Butler (116 Quotations)

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

Samuel Butler – [Experience]

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.

Samuel Butler – [Food and Eating]

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Samuel Butler – [Work]

Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.

Samuel Butler – [Waste]

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Samuel Butler – [Evil]

For every why he had a wherefore.

Samuel Butler – [Questions]

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure –tangible material prosperity in this world –is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism.

Samuel Butler – [Pleasure]

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Samuel Butler – [Truth]

For Wealth are all things that conduce, to one's destruction or their use. A standard both to buy and sell, all things from heaven down to hell.

Samuel Butler – [Wealth]

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Samuel Butler – [Friends and Friendship]

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Samuel Butler – [Infallibility]

God cannot alter the past, but historians can.

Samuel Butler – [History and Historians]

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

Samuel Butler – [Vice]

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.

Samuel Butler – [Enjoyment]

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Samuel Butler – [Agreement]

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

Samuel Butler – [Regret]

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Samuel Butler – [Lies and Lying]

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

Samuel Butler – [Illness]

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 – [God]

If life must not be taken too seriously — then so neither must death.

Samuel Butler – [Death and Dying]