Quotes from Samuel Butler

The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.

Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world.

Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace.

The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. If you look at it to admire it you are lost.

If a man has not studied painting, or at any rate black and white drawing, his eyes are wild; learning to draw tames them. The first step towards taming the eyes is to teach them not to see too much.

Painters should remember that the eye, as a general rule, is a good, simple, credulous organ very ready to take things on trust if it be told them with any confidence of assertion.

An artists touches are sometimes no more articulate than the barking of a dog who would call attention to something without exactly knowing what. This is as it should be, and he is a great artist who can be depended on not to bark at nothing.

Sketching from nature is very like trying to put a pinch of salt on her tail. And yet many manage to do it very nicely.

Every new idea has something of the pain and peril of childbirth about it; ideas are just as mortal and just as immortal as organised beings are.

Always eat grapes downwards that is, always eat the best grape first; in this way there will be none better left on the bunch, and each grape will seem good down to the last.

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

A Babylonish dialectWhich learned pedants much affect.

And prove their doctrine orthodox,By apostolic blows and knocks.

The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,For want of fighting was grown rusty,And ate into itself, for lackOf somebody to hew and hack.

He could distinguish and divideA hair 'twixt south and southwest side,On either which he would dispute,Confute, change hands, and still confute.

For he by geometric scale,Could take the size of pots of ale.

Every one should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it — torn up to irrecoverable tatters.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.

For all a rhetorician's rulesTeach nothing but to name his tools.

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