Samuel Butler Quotes

'Cause grace and virtue are within
Prohibited degrees of kin;
And therefore no true saint allows
They shall be suffer'd to espouse.

And bid the devil take the hin'most.

He made an instrument to know
If the moon shine at full or no.

Each window like a pill'ry appears,
With heads thrust thro' nail'd by the ears.

But still his tongue ran on, the less
Of weight it bore, with greater ease.

I am not now in fortune's power:
He that is down can fall no lower.

For his Religion, it was fit To match his learning and his wit; 'Twas Presbyterian true blue; For he was of that stubborn crew Of errant saints, whom all men grant To be the true Church Militant; Such as do build their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun; Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery; And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks; Call fire and sword and desolation, A godly thorough reformation, Which always must be carried on, And still be doing, never done; As if religion were intended For nothing else but to be mended. A sect, whose chief devotion lies In odd perverse antipathies; In falling out with that or this, And finding somewhat still amiss; More peevish, cross, and splenetick, Than dog distract, or monkey sick. That with more care keep holy-day The wrong, than others the right way; Compound for sins they are inclin'd to, By damning those they have no mind to: Still so perverse and opposite, As if they worshipp'd God for spite. The self-same thing they will abhor One way, and long another for. Free-will they one way disavow, Another, nothing else allow: All piety consists therein In them, in other men all sin...

Have always been at daggers-drawing,
And one another clapper-clawing.

He had got a hurt
O' the inside, of a deadlier sort.

They'll say our bus'ness, to reform The Church and State, is but a worm; For to subscribe, unsight, unseen, To an unknown Church-discipline, What is it else, but before-hand T'engage, and after understand? For when we swore to carry on The present Reformation, According to the purest mode Of Churches best reformed abroad, What did we else, but make a vow To do we know not what, nor how?'

For truth is precious and divine,—
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Cheer'd up himself with ends of verse
And sayings of philosophers.

While the honour thou hast got
Is spick and span new.

For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happen'd to break off I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words,ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by; Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You'd think he talk'd like other folk, For all a rhetorician's rules Teach nothing but to name his tools.

No Indian prince has to his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.