Quotes by Butler, Samuel

"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."

Butler, Samuel on lies and lying
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"Life is one long process of getting tired."

Butler, Samuel on life
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"To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it."

Butler, Samuel on life   

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"Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man."

Butler, Samuel on life   

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

Butler, Samuel on life   

"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."

Butler, Samuel on life   

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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."

Butler, Samuel on animals
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"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."

Butler, Samuel on animals   

"Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him."

Butler, Samuel on argument   

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"We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself."

Butler, Samuel on argument   

"Neither irony or sarcasm is argument."

Butler, Samuel on argument   

"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."

Butler, Samuel on art   

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"Logic is like the sword -- those who appeal to it, shall perish by it."

Butler, Samuel on logic   

"One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once."

Butler, Samuel on losers and losing
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"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."

Butler, Samuel on love
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"Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon."

Butler, Samuel on loyalty
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"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust."

Butler, Samuel on media   

"Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism."

Butler, Samuel on medicine   

"The money men make lives after them."

Butler, Samuel on money   

"The want of money is the root of all evil."

Butler, Samuel on money   

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"Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to."

Butler, Samuel on moralists   

"It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents."

Butler, Samuel on music   

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"The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered."

Butler, Samuel on opinions   

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"Opinions have vested interests just as men have."

Butler, Samuel on opinions   

"Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children."

Butler, Samuel on parents and parenting   

"All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others."

Butler, Samuel on philosophers and philosophy   

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"For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism."

Butler, Samuel on pleasure   

"Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions."

Butler, Samuel on banality   

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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."

Butler, Samuel on praise   

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"The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday."

Butler, Samuel on preachers and preaching   

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"In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."

Butler, Samuel on procrastination   

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"The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it."

Butler, Samuel on public opinion   

"Then spare the rod and spoil the child."

Butler, Samuel on punishment   

"For every why he had a wherefore."

Butler, Samuel on questions
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"If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason."

Butler, Samuel on reason
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"I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry."

Butler, Samuel on regret   

"There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule."

Butler, Samuel on rules   

"Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance."

Butler, Samuel on science   

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"The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously."

Butler, Samuel on seriousness   

"Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance."

Butler, Samuel on belief   

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