Samuel Butler (novelist) quotes - page 14

We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and to send doctrinaires flying, even when they have bound her down and think they have her at their mercy. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
A man's style in any art should be like his dress - it should attract as little attention as possible. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve? View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Their view evidently was that genius was like offences--needs must that it come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes. A man's business, they hold, is to think as his neighbours do, for Heaven help him if he thinks good what they count bad. And really it is hard to see how the Erewhonian theory differs from our own, for the word "idiot” only means a person who forms his opinions for himself. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circumvent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the interlacing of the roots of things with one another. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Everything matters more than we think it does, and, at the same time, nothing matters so much as we think it does. The merest spark may set all Europe in a blaze, but though all Europe be set in a blaze twenty times over, the world will wag itself right again. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Is there any religion whose followers can be pointed to as distinctly more amiable and trustworthy than those of any other? If so, this should be enough. I find the nicest and best people generally profess no religion at all, but are ready to like the best men of all religions. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Silence and tact may or may not be the same thing. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Then spare the rod and spoil the child. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. These are the most reliable filters yet invented. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)