Samuel Butler Quotes

It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

"Mention but the word "divinity," and our sense of the divine is clouded."

Friendship is like Money; easier made than kept.

If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, namely, that this mutual interdependence between the spiritual and the material is itself also dependent on law, and he has discovered the bond by which the science of the matter and the science of consciousness are united into a single whole.

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.

Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another.

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.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

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

Life is one long process of getting tired.

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