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
There is no bore like a clever bore.
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.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa.
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.