Samuel Butler Quotes

No boy can resist being fed well by a good-natured and still handsome woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in this respect — give them a bone and they will like you at once.

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

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.

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

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know he is dead.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

To me it seems that youth is like spring, an overpraised season — delightful if it happen to be a favoured one, but in practice very rarely favoured and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

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

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.

To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it

To do great work one must be very idle as well as very industrious.

It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can — it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.