Quotes by Butler, Samuel

"There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad."

Butler, Samuel on academia   

"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy -- but he who has shown the better temper."

Butler, Samuel on debate
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"A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war."

Butler, Samuel on doctors   

"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."

Butler, Samuel on dogs
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"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."

Butler, Samuel on joy
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"Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint."

Butler, Samuel on evil   

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"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income."

Butler, Samuel on excess   

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"Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world."

Butler, Samuel on experience
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"The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them."

Butler, Samuel on experts
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"What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth."

Butler, Samuel on faith
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"You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it."

Butler, Samuel on faith
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"Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life."

Butler, Samuel on fathers   

"Eating is touch carried to the bitter end."

Butler, Samuel on food and eating   

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

Butler, Samuel on food and eating   

"There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

Butler, Samuel on fools and foolishness   

"We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them."

Butler, Samuel on forgiveness   

"Friendship is like money, easier made than kept."

Butler, Samuel on friends and friendship
21 fans of this quote   

"A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage -- but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends."

Butler, Samuel on friends and friendship   

"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."

Butler, Samuel on friends and friendship   

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"All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it."

Butler, Samuel on fun   

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"A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind."

Butler, Samuel on genius   

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

Butler, Samuel on agreement   

"It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk."

Butler, Samuel on alcohol and alcoholism   

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

Butler, Samuel on alliances   

"When the righteous man truth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful nor quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness."

Butler, Samuel on amiability   

"If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him."

Butler, Samuel on god   

"God cannot alter the past, but historians can."

Butler, Samuel on history and historians
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"An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed."

Butler, Samuel on home   

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"Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God."

Butler, Samuel on humankind   

"Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished."

Butler, Samuel on ideas   

"I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better."

Butler, Samuel on illness   

"To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead."

Butler, Samuel on immortality   

"Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away."

Butler, Samuel on indecision
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"From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right."

Butler, Samuel on infallibility
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"Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so."

Butler, Samuel on justice   

"A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers."

Butler, Samuel on law and lawyers   

"In law, nothing is certain but the expense."

Butler, Samuel on law and lawyers
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"Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well."

Butler, Samuel on lies and lying
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"The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way."

Butler, Samuel on lies and lying
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"I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy."

Butler, Samuel on lies and lying
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