Samuel Butler Quotes

I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism — better dead than dying.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

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.

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

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

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

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.

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.

People are always in good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

Friendship is like Money; easier made than kept.