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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.

“There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.”

— Samuel Butler

Truth

All Quotes by Samuel Butler

“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

“The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

— Samuel Butler

Truth

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

— Samuel Butler

Art

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

— Samuel Butler

God

“Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.”

— Samuel Butler

Women

“Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.”

— Samuel Butler

Friendship

“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

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

— Samuel Butler

Death

“The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.”

— Samuel Butler

Science

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

— Samuel Butler

Funny

“The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.”

— Samuel Butler

Money

“Priests are not men of the world it is not intended that they should be and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.”

— Samuel Butler

Best

“They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'”

— Samuel Butler

Power

“Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.”

— Samuel Butler

Life

“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

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

— Samuel Butler

Death

“The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.”

— Samuel Butler

Art

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

— Samuel Butler

Faith

“There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.”

— Samuel Butler

Truth

“There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.”

— Samuel Butler

Death