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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.

“The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.”

— Samuel Butler

Health

All Quotes by Samuel Butler

“A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.”

— Samuel Butler

Humor

“Life is like music it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.”

— Samuel Butler

Music

“Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.”

— Samuel Butler

Dreams

“If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.”

— Samuel Butler

Death

“We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.”

— Samuel Butler

Money

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

— Samuel Butler

Funny

“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.”

— Samuel Butler

Art

“Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?”

— Samuel Butler

Marriage

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

— Samuel Butler

Faith

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

— Samuel Butler

War

“The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.”

— Samuel Butler

Best

“God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.”

— Samuel Butler

God

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

— Samuel Butler

Legal

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

— Samuel Butler

Life

“The history of art is the history of revivals.”

— Samuel Butler

Art

“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

“People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.”

— Samuel Butler

Religion

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

— Samuel Butler

God

“Life is not an exact science, it is an art.”

— Samuel Butler

Art

“A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.”

— Samuel Butler

Money