Samuel Butler

Novelist, iconoclastic Victorian-era English author

Nationality: British

Type: Novelist

Birth: 1835-1902

Page: 1

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

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Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

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Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

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The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

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At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

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When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.

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There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.

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There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

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A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

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He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

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I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

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Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.

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Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

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We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

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Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

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Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

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Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

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Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

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Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

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There are charms made only for distance admiration.

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You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

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He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.

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Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

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The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

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Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

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The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

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Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.

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Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

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There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

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It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

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Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

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I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

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The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

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No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

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Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.

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He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

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Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

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I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

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Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

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I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

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Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

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Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

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Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

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I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

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Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.

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Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

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Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

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Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.

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Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

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What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

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The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

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His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

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It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

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Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

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It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

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The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.

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They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

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I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappoin

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He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

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To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

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Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.

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You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

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Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize

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Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.

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Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

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Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

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He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

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A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

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Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

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All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

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If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair.

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To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

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Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exempl

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The endearing elegance of female friendship.

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I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

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The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.

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The future is purchased by the present.

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Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

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Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

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Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.

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Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.

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I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

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There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

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No one ever became great by imitation.

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The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

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He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

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Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

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The chains of habit are generally too weak to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.

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The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.

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For who is pleased with himself.

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We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

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To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

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Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

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Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.

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Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.

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It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolen

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No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

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Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappoi

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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

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Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

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I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

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I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice.

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As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

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Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

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Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

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I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.

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A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.

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To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

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To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.

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I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

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Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.