Quote

The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

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
Character
Escape
Deeply
Spread
English
Hold
Conducive
Influence
Rooted
Opinion
Opinions
Wish
Welfare

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Image
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
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
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
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
How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents?
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
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
Samuel Butler
Image
There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
Samuel Butler
Image
There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Samuel Butler
Image
Adversity, if a man is set down to it by degrees, is more supportable with equanimity by most people than any great prosperity arrived at in a single lifetime.
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
[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.
Samuel Butler
Image
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
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
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
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
Letters are like wine if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
Samuel Butler
Image
Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
Image
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Samuel Butler
Image
When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.
Samuel Butler