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
Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order.
If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.