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
Such as take lodgings in a head that's to be let unfurnished.
An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the
Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas.
People are lucky and unlucky...according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
It has beeen said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
Some men love truth so much that they seem in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.
The dead being the majority, it is natural that we should have more friends among them than among the living.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyze but by the tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.
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.
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.