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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.

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“Self-preservation is the first law of nature.”

— Samuel Butler

Nature

All Quotes by Samuel Butler

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

— Samuel Butler

Art

“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

“Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.”

— Samuel Butler

Medical

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

— Samuel Butler

Death

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

— Samuel Butler

Knowledge

“Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.”

— Samuel Butler

God

“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

“Brigands demand your money or your life women require both.”

— Samuel Butler

Money

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

— Samuel Butler

Work

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

— Samuel Butler

Money

“If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.”

— Samuel Butler

God

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

— Samuel Butler

Religion

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

— Samuel Butler

Marriage

“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

“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

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

— Samuel Butler

God

“The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.”

— Samuel Butler

Death

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

— Samuel Butler

Death

“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

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

— Samuel Butler

War