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
Hands
Able
Look
Cultured
Firsts
Suspicion
Looks
Second
First
Hand
Enough
Upon
Men
Culture

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Image
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
Samuel Butler
Image
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Samuel Butler
Image
Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.
Samuel Butler
Image
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler
Image
They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, Can he name a kitten? And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.
Samuel Butler
Image
The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
Samuel Butler
Image
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Samuel Butler
Image
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Samuel Butler
Image
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
Samuel Butler
Image
Let man be true and every god a liar.
Samuel Butler
Image
My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine.
Samuel Butler
Image
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Samuel Butler
Image
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler
Image
He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
Samuel Butler
Image
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
Samuel Butler
Image
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler
Image
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel Butler
Image
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Samuel Butler
Image
If I die prematurely at any rate I shall be saved from being bored to death by my own success.
Samuel Butler
Image
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
Samuel Butler