Quotes from Samuel Butler

"The Ancient Mariner" — This poem would not have taken so well if it had been called "The Old Sailor"...

Reason. If you follow it far enough, it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

All things are like exposed photographic plates that have no visible image on them till they have been developed.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

Oaths are but words, and words but wind...

It is bad enough to see one's own good things fathered on other people, but it is worse to have other people's rubbish fathered upon oneself.

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.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.

Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

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.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.

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

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.