75 Samuel Butler Quotes For Literary Lovers

The widely known utopian novel called 'Erewhon' was written by Samuel Butler.

Samuel Butler has written a lot of fiction as well as satire. His main work includes 'Lucubratio Ebria' in 1865 and 'Life And Habit' in 1878.

Read through these quotes to get inspired and understand hidden meanings in life and its challenges. These quotes may also help you stay on friendly terms with your peers. Butler thinks that life is music but it is also one long process of just getting tired!

"Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits."

"All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it."

"The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore."

"Don't learn to do, but learn in doing."

"Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."

"Life is one long process of getting tired."

"We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them."

"A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget."

"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income."

"It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can --it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."

"To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know he is dead."

"You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it."

"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds."

"Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."

"We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them."

"Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime."

"To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it."

"If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall never long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do."

"A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand."

"Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions."

"Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well."

"People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced."

"He that complies against his will Is of his own opinion still."

"Happiness and misery consist in a progression towards better or worse; it does not matter how high up or low down you are, it depends not on this, but on the direction in which you are tending."

"The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds."

"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."

"Truth might be heroic, but it was not within the range of practical domestic politics."

"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."

"The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony."

"In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."

"The major sin is the sin of being born."

"Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often."

"A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words."

"Union may be strength, but it is mere brute strength unless wisely directed."

"Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on."

"If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take."

"Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it - torn up to irrecoverable tatters."

"It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings."

"To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it."

"Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself."

"Tell your children that they are naughty - much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority."

"A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide."

"There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

"Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances."

You can achieve great pleasure simply by reading the following quotes by Samuel Butler, who describes progress as a universal innate desire.

"The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too."

"Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both."

"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."

"The principal business of life is to enjoy it."

"Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it."

"All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it."

"It is tact that is golden, not silence."

"All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others."

"Mention but the word "divinity," and our sense of the divine is clouded."

"Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing."

"To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious."

"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature."

"Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name."

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them."

"Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only."

"An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books."

"Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence."

"Prayers are to men as dolls are to children."

One intriguing fact about Samuel Butler is that he truly believes that God has written all the books, as an apology for the devil.

"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."

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

"Logic is like the sword-those who appeal to it shall perish by it."

"The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them."

"They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?"

"Poetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's."

"Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such."

"I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy."

"Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it."

"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."

"Books are like imprisoned souls until someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them."

"I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong."

"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."