The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Value
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Death
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Genius
A degenerate nobleman, or one that is proud of his birth, is like a turnip: there is nothing good of him but that which is underground.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Aristocracy
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it—torn up to irrecoverable tatters.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Excess, Waste, Change
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.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Life, Feelings
It has come, I know not how, to be taken for granted, by many persons, that Christianity is not so much a subject of inquiry; but that it is, now at length, discovered to be fictitious.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Christianity
There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Education
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity, and pride and arrogance.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Ignorance, Pride, Vanity
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Parenting, Parents
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, “I bet that my Redeemer liveth.”
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Faith
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Reason, Thoughts, Thought
Opinion governs all mankind, like the blind’s leading of the blind
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Opinions
Genius is no respecter of time, trouble, money or persons, the four things around which human affairs turn most persistently.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Genius
We have all sinned and come short of the glory of making ourselves as comfortable as we easily might have done.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Happiness
Loyalty is still the same,
Whether it win or lose the game;
True as a dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Loyalty
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Argument, Arguments
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Fathers, Father, Family
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.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Reason, Thought, Understanding
The extremes of glory and of shame, Like east and west, become the same No Indian prince has to his palace – More followers than a thief to the gallows
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Shame
An apology for the Devil: It must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Perspective
Our self-conceit sustains, and always must sustain us.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Confidence, Assurance
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Style, Taste
I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Regret
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Food, Eating
We grow weary of those things (and perhaps soonest) which we most desire.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Success is not everything
The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God’s message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Crime, Criminals
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Arguments, Argument
Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of Heaven and Hell.
—Samuel Butler
Topics: Heaven
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- James Baldwin American Novelist, Social Critic
- William Temple English Theologian
- Paul Goodman American Novelist, Essayist
- Silas Weir Mitchell American Physician, Writer
- Henry Eyring American Chemist
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