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The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.

Samuel Butler

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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
Humans
Alcohol
Great
Measure
Intellect
Animals
Owes
Imagination
Stimulus
Animal
Superiority
Given
Lower
Human
Beer

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Words are like money there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
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Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
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When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
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Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
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If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen?
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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.
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The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
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Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.
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Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
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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.
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It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
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The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion.
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In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
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People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
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The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.
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Our own death is a premium which we must pay for the far greater benefit we have derived from the fact that so many people have not only lived but also died before us.
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Let man be true and every god a liar.
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Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
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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.
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Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
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