Samuel Butler (novelist) quotes - page 8

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
God's merits are so transcendent that it is not surprising his faults should be in reasonable proportion. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals' and plants' business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
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. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as 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. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies. (Samuel Butler (novelist))
Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
To think of a thing they must be got rid of: they are the clothes that thoughts wear-only the clothes. I say this over and over again, for there is nothing of more importance. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Genius...has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble...It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains. (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. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
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)
We can no longer separate things as we once could: everything tends towards unity; one thing, one action, in one place, at one time. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)
Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. View quote
Samuel Butler (novelist)