Quotes from Samuel Butler

When I'm long dead and gone, people will be falsely attributing made-up quotes to me on internet pages and memes.

The queen of night, whose large command Rules all the sea, and half the land

Union may be strength, but it is mere brute strength unless wisely directed.

Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.

It is so mean of people," he exclaimed to himself, "to inflict an injury of this sort, and then shirk facing those whom they have injured; let us hope that, at any rate, they and I may meet in Heaven". But of this he was doubtful, for when people had done so great a wrong as this, it was hardly to be supposed that they would go to Heaven at all - and as for his meeting them in another place, the idea never so much as entered his mind.

We next to never know when we are well off: but this cuts two ways,--for if we did, we should perhaps know better when we are ill off also; and I have sometimes thought that there are as many ignorant of the one as of the other.

No miracle was effected without means of some kind; the difference between the faithful and the unbeliever consisted in the very fact that the former could see a miracle where the latter could not. The

It is far safer to know too little than too much.  People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other.

So it is with most of us: that which we observe to be taken as a matter of course by those around us, we take as a matter of course ourselves.

All young ladies are either very pretty or very clever or very sweet; they may take their choice as to which category they will go in for, but go in for one of the three they must. It was hopeless to try and pass Charlotte off as either pretty or sweet. So she became clever as the only remaining alternative.

The practical outcome of the foregoing was a conviction in Theobald's mind, and if in his, then in Christina's, that it was their duty to begin training up their children in the way they should go, even from their earliest infancy. The first signs of self-will must be carefully looked for, and plucked up by the roots at once before they had time to grow. Theobald

Each moment I felt increasing upon me that dreadful doubt as to my own identity—as to the continuity of my past and present existence—which is the first sign of that distraction which comes on those who have lost themselves in the bush. I had fought against this feeling hitherto, and had conquered it; but the intense silence and gloom of this rocky wilderness were too much for me, and I felt that my power of collecting myself was beginning to be impaired.

I said to him one day that the very slender reward which God had attached to the pursuit of serious inquiry was a sufficient proof that He disapproved of it, or at any rate that He did not set much store by it nor wish to encourage it. He said: "Oh, don't talk about rewards. Look at Milton, who only got 5 pounds for 'Paradise Lost.'" "And a great deal too much," I rejoined promptly. "I would have given him twice as much myself not to have written it at all.

It takes two people to say a thing--a sayer and a sayee. The one is just as essential to any true saying as the other.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it — and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow. He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most; God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. If

nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily.

My boy," returned my father, "you must not judge by the work, but by the work in connection with the surroundings. Could Giotto or Filippo Lippi, think you, have got a picture into the Exhibition? Would

Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.

the baby must be either a boy or girl — this much, at any rate, was clear.

tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk

tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate, while much less expense by way of show was required of him

I don't care," he answered, "whether I make the most of my strength or not; I don't know whether I have any strength, but if I have I dare say it will find some way of exerting itself. I will live as I like living, not as other people would like me to live; thanks to my aunt and you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said

AUTHORITY intoxicates, And makes mere sots of magistrates; The fumes of it invade the brain, And make men giddy, proud, and vain By this the fool commands the wise, The noble with the base complies, The sot assumes the rule of wit, And cowards make the base submit