Quote

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

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
Whether
Kitten
Write
Condemned
Cannot
Literary
Power
Test
Writing
Cat
Men
Tests
Name
Inscription
Names
Inscriptions

More quotes by Samuel Butler

Image
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel Butler
Image
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
Samuel Butler
Image
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
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
Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
Samuel Butler
Image
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler
Image
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
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
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
Samuel Butler
Image
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.
Samuel Butler
Image
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler
Image
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds
Samuel Butler
Image
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
Samuel Butler
Image
There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.
Samuel Butler
Image
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
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
Image
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Samuel Butler
Image
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.
Samuel Butler