Quote

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

Samuel Butler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Samuel Butler
Age: 66 †
Born: 1835
Born: December 4
Died: 1902
Died: June 18
Farmer
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Translator
Writer
Notts
Cellarius
First
Hand
Enough
Upon
Men
Culture
Hands
Able
Look
Cultured
Firsts
Suspicion
Looks
Second

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Image
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler
Image
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Samuel Butler
Image
God and the Devil are an effort after specialisation and division of labour.
Samuel Butler
Image
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Samuel Butler
Image
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
Samuel Butler
Image
[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
Image
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
Samuel Butler
Image
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Samuel Butler
Image
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Samuel Butler
Image
We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
Samuel Butler
Image
The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is.
Samuel Butler
Image
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
Samuel Butler
Image
A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.
Samuel Butler
Image
If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.
Samuel Butler
Image
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
Samuel Butler
Image
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
Samuel Butler
Image
How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
Samuel Butler
Image
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Samuel Butler
Image
When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.
Samuel Butler
Image
Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
Samuel Butler