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Samuel Butler

81 quotes

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose iconoclastic wit challenged the Victorian establishment. His satirical novel *Erewhon* and the autobiographical *The Way of All Flesh* questioned received ideas about religion, family, and morality with a dry humor that was ahead of its time.

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

— Samuel Butler

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All Quotes by Samuel Butler

“And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.”

— Samuel Butler

God

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

— Samuel Butler

Work

“In law, nothing is certain but the expense.”

— Samuel Butler

Legal

“God cannot alter the past, though historians can.”

— Samuel Butler

God

“To himself everyone is immortal he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.”

— Samuel Butler

Death

“What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.”

— Samuel Butler

Faith

“Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.”

— Samuel Butler

Life

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

— Samuel Butler

Knowledge

“You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.”

— Samuel Butler

Faith

“It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.”

— Samuel Butler

Money

“God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.”

— Samuel Butler

God

“Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.”

— Samuel Butler

Death

“Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.”

— Samuel Butler

Food

“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.”

— Samuel Butler

Valentinesday

“A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.”

— Samuel Butler

War

“God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.”

— Samuel Butler

God

“Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.”

— Samuel Butler

Best

“Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.”

— Samuel Butler

Faith

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

— Samuel Butler

God

“If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.”

— Samuel Butler

Death