Best Quotes by Samuel Butler (Top 10)
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Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
Samuel Butler
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The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
Samuel Butler
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All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
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Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.
Samuel Butler
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Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler
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All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
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Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler
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Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
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Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
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Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler
More Samuel Butler Quotes
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Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
Samuel Butler
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To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler
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An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
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Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
Samuel Butler
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Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler
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Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler
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We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.
Samuel Butler
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Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
Samuel Butler
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Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler
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Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Samuel Butler
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The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
Samuel Butler
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Silence is not always tact, and it is tact that is golden, not silence.
Samuel Butler
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler
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A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Samuel Butler
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I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Samuel Butler
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A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Samuel Butler
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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
Samuel Butler
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You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Samuel Butler
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Samuel Butler
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The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler
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Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler
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It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Samuel Butler
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Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Samuel Butler
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To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
Samuel Butler
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A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Samuel Butler
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Samuel Butler
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Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Samuel Butler
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Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Samuel Butler
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The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them.
Samuel Butler
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All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler
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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.
Samuel Butler
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God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Samuel Butler
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If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
Samuel Butler
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Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
Samuel Butler
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For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Samuel Butler
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler
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He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.
Samuel Butler
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Samuel Butler
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Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Samuel Butler
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When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Samuel Butler
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If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Samuel Butler
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Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler