Samuel Butler Quotes

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.

The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

A little boy and a little girl were looking at a picture of Adam and Eve. "Which is Adam and which is Eve?" said one. "I do not know," said the other, "but I could tell if they had their clothes on."

This poem [The Ancient Mariner] would not have taken so well if it had been called “The Old Sailor.”

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

To put one's trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

The dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.

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

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.