Samuel Butler (novelist) quotes - page 3

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
A definition encloses a wilderness of idea within a wall of words. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say "Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There are two classes of people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against if a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to the second. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Memory and forgetfulness are as life and death to one another. To live is to remember and to remember is to live. To die is to forget and to forget is to die. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
It is far safer to know too little than too much. People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Youth is like spring, an overpraised season. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)