Samuel Butler (novelist)

Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and nothing else.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) religion

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

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) genius

Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) inspiration

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) genius

All men can do great things, if they know what great things are.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

Surely the glory of finally getting rid of and burying a long and troublesome matter should be as great as that of making an important discovery. The trouble is that the coverer is like Samson who perished in the wreck of what he had destroyed; if he gets rid of a thing effectually he gets rid of himself too.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) self

The supposition that the world is ever in league to put a man down is childish. Hardly less childish is it for an author to lay the blame on reviewers. A good sturdy author is a match for a hundred reviewers.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) world

I am the enfant terrible of literature and science.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) science

If people like being deceived — and this can hardly be doubted — there can rarely have been a time during which they can have had more of the wish than now. The literary, scientific and religious worlds vie with one another in trying to gratify the public.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) time

The greatest poets never write poetry. Theandare not the greatest — they are only the greatest that we can know. And so withamong musicians. For the highest poetry, whether in music or literature, is ineffable — it must be felt from one person to another, it cannot be articulated.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) poetry

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) work

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) words

Italians, and perhaps Frenchmen, consider first whether they like or want to do a thing and then whether, on the whole, it will do them any harm. Englishmen, and perhaps Germans, consider first whether they ought to like a thing and often never reach the questions whether they do like it and whether it will hurt. There is much to be said for both systems, but I suppose it is best to combine them as far as possible.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) education

I should like to like ’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but 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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) music

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

They [my thoughts] are like persons met upon a journey; I think them very agreeable at first but soon find, as a rule, that I am tired of them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) thoughts

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. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) patience

It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) books

It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) hate

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

The evil that men do lives after them. Yes, and a good deal of the evil that they never did as well.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

There are two classes, those who want to know and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) think

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) time

Time is the only true purgatory.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) true

He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

The great 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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) self

The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) luck

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) words

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) silence

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) trust

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) love

This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”

— Samuel Butler (novelist) poem

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. "Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one. "I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes on."

— Samuel Butler (novelist) girl

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) water

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) truth

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) love

Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) lie

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) truth

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) mind

Our choice is apparently most free, and we are least obviously driven to determine our course, in those cases where the future is most obscure, that is, when the balance of advantage appears most doubtful.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) future

You can have all ego, or all non-ego, but in theory you cannot have half one and half the other — yet in practice this is exactly what you must have, for everything is both itself and not itself at one and the same time.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) time

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) philosophy

It is with philosophy as with just intonation on a piano, if you get everything quite straight and on all fours in one department, in perfect tune, it is delightful so long as you keep well in the middle of the key; but as soon as you modulate you find the new key is out of tune and the more remotely you modulate the more out of tune you get.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) philosophy

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse, but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) faith

I am not sure that I do not begin to like the correction of a mistake, even when it involves my having shown much ignorance and stupidity, as well as I like hitting on a new idea.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) ignorance

No one thinks he will escape death, so there is no disappointment and, as long as we know neither the when nor the how, the mere fact that we shall one day have to go does not much affect us; we do not care, even though we know vaguely that we have not long to live. The serious trouble begins when death becomes definite in time and shape. It is in precise fore-knowledge, rather than in sin, that the sting of death is to be found; and such fore-knowledge is generally withheld; though, strangely enough, many would have it if they could.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) death

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) dead

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) death

To try to live in posterity is to be like an actor who leaps over the footlights and talks to the orchestra.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) light

The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) world

When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) people

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) will

Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) truth

Youth is like spring, an overpraised season.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) sea

A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) love

Taking numbers into account, I should think more mental suffering had been undergone in the streets leading from St George’s, Hanover Square, than in the condemned cells of Newgate.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) music

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

How is it, I wonder, that all religious officials, from God the Father to the parish beadle, should be so arbitrary and exacting.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) religious

One great reason why clergymen’s households are generally unhappy is because the clergyman is so much at home or close about the house.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) men

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

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

To me it seems that those who are happy in this world are better and more lovable people than those who are not.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) people

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.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) people

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 (novelist) self

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) lying

A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) life

A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage—but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.

— Samuel Butler (novelist) friendship

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