Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler
Samuel Butlerwas an iconoclastic Victorian-era English author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, which remain in use to this day...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth4 December 1835
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.