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Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Aging category:
- b.1835 d.1902...
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, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Aging category:
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Anxiety category:
Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Art category:
- b.1835 d.1902...
The history of art is the history of revivals. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Artists category:
- The Way of All Flesh, 1903...
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself... (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Belief category:
Belief, like any other moving body, follows the path of least resistance. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Books category:
Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Books category:
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Boredom category:
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Boredom category:
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Character category:
Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mould and chisel and complete a character. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Conviction category:
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Criticism category:
- b.1835 d.1902...
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it, you are lost. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Culture category:
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second, hand. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Doubt category:
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. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Drunkenness category:
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Ego category:
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)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Exhaustion category:
Life is one long process of getting tired. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Experience category:
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Fear category:
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Friendship category:
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Grace category:
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Happiness category:
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Health category:
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Humanity category:
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Immortality category:
- b.1835 d.1902...
To himself every one is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Importance category:
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Indolence category:
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Knowledge category:
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Life category:
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Life category:
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Life category:
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Life category:
To live is like love, all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Love category:
-The Way of All Flesh, 1903...
'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Mirrors category:
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Mistakes category:
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Mistakes category:
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Money category:
- b.1835 d.1902...
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Money category:
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Morality category:
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Music category:
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, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Mysteries category:
-b.1835 d.1902...
There is no mystery about art. Do the things that you can see; they will show you those that you cannot see. By doing what you can you will gradually get to know what it is that you want to do and cannot do, and so be able to do it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Mysteries category:
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Pets category:
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Pets category:
-b.1835 d.1902...
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)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Philosophy category:
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Portraiture category:
-The Note-Books of Samuel Butler,1912...
A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Progress category:
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Religion category:
-b.1835 d.1902...
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Responsibility category:
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Rules category:
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Rules category:
There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Satisfaction category:
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Silence category:
It is tact that is golden, not silence. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Taste category:
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Technology category:
-The Book of Machines from Erewhon, publ. 1840
Reflect upon the extraordinary advance which machines have made during the last few hundred years, and note how slowly the animal and vegetable kingdoms are advancing. The more highly organised machines are creatures not so much of yesterday, as of the last five minutes... in comparison with past time... what will they not in the end become? Is it not safer to nip the mischief in the bud and to forbid them further progress? (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Thinking category:
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Thought category:
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)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Thought category:
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Tradition category:
If an art student is to do any good, his development will epitomize the history of painting. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Truth category:
I care about truth, not for truth's sake but for my own. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Truth category:
All truth is not to be told at all times. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Truth category:
The course of true anything never does run smooth. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Tyranny category:
He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Vanity category:
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Words category:
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Words category:
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, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Work category:
-The Way of All Flesh, 1903...
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures 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)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Workshops category:
An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Writing category:
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, novelist - From the Writing category:
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Samuel Butler, poet - From the Belief category:
- Hudibras...
Whatever sceptic could inquire for, / For ev'ry why he had a wherefore... (Samuel Butler, poet)
Samuel Butler, poet - From the Critics category:
- Hudibras...
He was in LOGIC a great critic, / Profoundly skill'd in analytic;... For all a rhetorician's rules / Teach nothing but to name his tools. (Samuel Butler, poet)
Samuel Butler, poet - From the Innocence category:
Justice, while she winks at crimes, / Stumbles on innocence sometimes. (Samuel Butler, poet)
Samuel Butler, poet - From the Religion category:
-Hudibras...
As if religion were intended / For nothing else but to be mended... (Samuel Butler, poet)
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