Quotes by Samuel Butler

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
– Samuel Butler
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
– Samuel Butler
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case; God has written all the books.
– Samuel Butler
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
– Samuel Butler
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
– Samuel Butler
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
– Samuel Butler
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
– Samuel Butler
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
– Samuel Butler
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
– Samuel Butler
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
– Samuel Butler
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
– Samuel Butler
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
– Samuel Butler
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
– Samuel Butler
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
– Samuel Butler
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
– Samuel Butler
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
– Samuel Butler
The want of money is the root of all evil.
– Samuel Butler
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
– Samuel Butler
The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
– Samuel Butler
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
– Samuel Butler
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
– Samuel Butler
Priests are not men of the world it is not intended that they should be and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
– Samuel Butler
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
– Samuel Butler
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
– Samuel Butler
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
– Samuel Butler
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.
– Samuel Butler
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
– Samuel Butler
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
– Samuel Butler
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
– Samuel Butler
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
– Samuel Butler
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
– Samuel Butler
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
– Samuel Butler
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
– Samuel Butler
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
– Samuel Butler
Brigands demand your money or your life women require both.
– Samuel Butler
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
– Samuel Butler
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
– Samuel Butler
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
– Samuel Butler
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
– Samuel Butler
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
– Samuel Butler