Quotes

“People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.” Samuel Butler

“People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.” Samuel Butler

“People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.” Samuel Butler

“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.” Samuel Butler

“The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.” Samuel Butler

“The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.” Samuel Butler

“The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.” Samuel Butler

“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.” Samuel Butler

“The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.” Samuel Butler

“The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.” Samuel Butler

“The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.” Samuel Butler

“The want of money is the root of all evil.” Samuel Butler

“There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.” Samuel Butler

“There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.” Samuel Butler

“There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.” Samuel Butler

“Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.” Samuel Butler

“Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.” Samuel Butler

“Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.” Samuel Butler

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

“We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.” Samuel Butler

“What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.” Samuel Butler

“When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.” Samuel Butler

“Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.” Samuel Butler

“A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.” Samuel Butler

“Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.” Samuel Butler

“Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.” Samuel Butler

“Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.” Samuel Butler

“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

“Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.” Samuel Butler

“Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.” Samuel Butler