110+ Samuel Butler Quotes On Death, Satirical And Witty

Samuel Butler was a British poet and satirist of the Victorian era. He is best known for his long poem Hudibras, a satirical work that mocked the Puritans, as well as his novel Erewhon, which satirized Victorian society. He also wrote a number of essays, poems, and other works, including The Way of All Flesh, which is considered to be his masterpiece. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Samuel Butler on death, love, satirical.

Top 10 Samuel Butler Quotes

1. Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
2. Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
3. Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.
4. The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
5. People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
6. Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.
7. Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
8. 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.
9. Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
10. The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.

Samuel Butler Image Quotes

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. — Samuel Butler

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Short Quotes

• Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
• He dons are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
• The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
• The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
• Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
• All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
• I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
• Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
• Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
• It is tact that is golden, not silence.

Samuel Butler Quotes About Death

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. — Samuel Butler

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion. — Samuel Butler

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death. — Samuel Butler

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt. — Samuel Butler

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad. — Samuel Butler

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better. — Samuel Butler

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved. — Samuel Butler

Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible. — Samuel Butler

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all. — Samuel Butler

If a man knows not life which he hath seen, how shall he know death, which he hath not seen? — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes About Love

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all. — Samuel Butler

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. — Samuel Butler

Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure. — Samuel Butler

We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them. — Samuel Butler

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly. — Samuel Butler

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate. — Samuel Butler

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one. — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes About People

People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect. — Samuel Butler

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. — Samuel Butler

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them. — Samuel Butler

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy. — Samuel Butler

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it. — Samuel Butler

Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. — Samuel Butler

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying. — Samuel Butler

In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation. — Samuel Butler

I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry. — Samuel Butler

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced. — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes About Life

Life is one long process of getting tired. — Samuel Butler

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. — Samuel Butler

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man. — Samuel Butler

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. — Samuel Butler

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. — Samuel Butler

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character. — Samuel Butler

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both. — Samuel Butler

He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. — Samuel Butler

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life. — Samuel Butler

Life is not an exact science, it is an art. — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes About World

From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. — Samuel Butler

The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it. — Samuel Butler

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. — Samuel Butler

Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things. — Samuel Butler

Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so. — Samuel Butler

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world. — Samuel Butler

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon. — Samuel Butler

For most men, and most circumstances, pleasure --tangible material prosperity in this world --is the safest test of virtue. Progress has ever been through the pleasures rather than through the extreme sharp virtues, and the most virtuous have leaned to excess rather than to asceticism. — Samuel Butler

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal. — Samuel Butler

This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark. — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Quotes About Virtue

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy. — Samuel Butler

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue. — Samuel Butler

The function of vice is to keep virtue within reasonable bounds. — Samuel Butler

In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa. — Samuel Butler

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing. — Samuel Butler

The extremes of vice and virtue are alike detestable, and absolute virtue is as sure to kill a man as absolute vice is. — Samuel Butler

It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds. — Samuel Butler

How often do we not see children ruined through the virtues, real or supposed, of their parents? — Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler Famous Quotes And Sayings

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. — Samuel Butler

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. — Samuel Butler

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions. — Samuel Butler

Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name. — Samuel Butler

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one. — Samuel Butler

A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends. — Samuel Butler

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

The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything. — Samuel Butler

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

Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him. — Samuel Butler

A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct. — Samuel Butler

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself. — Samuel Butler

God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch. — Samuel Butler

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself. — Samuel Butler

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it. — Samuel Butler

The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion. — Samuel Butler

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. — Samuel Butler

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. — Samuel Butler

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved. — Samuel Butler

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason. — Samuel Butler

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance. — Samuel Butler

Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away. — Samuel Butler

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument. — Samuel Butler

In law, nothing is certain but the expense. — Samuel Butler

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand. — Samuel Butler

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine. — Samuel Butler

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. — Samuel Butler

Oaths are but words, and words are but wind. — Samuel Butler

For every why he had a wherefore. — Samuel Butler

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us. — Samuel Butler

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them. — Samuel Butler

No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction. — Samuel Butler

The want of money is the root of all evil. — Samuel Butler

God cannot alter the past, though historians can. — Samuel Butler

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. — Samuel Butler

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still. — Samuel Butler

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions. — Samuel Butler

The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places. — Samuel Butler

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal. — Samuel Butler

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore. — Samuel Butler

Youth is like spring, an over-praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits. — Samuel Butler

Opinions have vested interests just as men have. — Samuel Butler

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy -- but he who has shown the better temper. — Samuel Butler

The course of true anything never does run smooth. — Samuel Butler

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought. — Samuel Butler

Be virtuous and you will be vicious. — Samuel Butler

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness. — Samuel Butler

I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted. — Samuel Butler

What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth. — Samuel Butler

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. — Samuel Butler

Then spare the rod and spoil the child. — Samuel Butler

The history of art is the history of revivals. — Samuel Butler

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. — Samuel Butler

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once. — Samuel Butler

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them. — Samuel Butler

A hen is only a egg's way of making another egg. — Samuel Butler

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap. — Samuel Butler

Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God. — Samuel Butler

Life Lessons by Samuel Butler

1. Samuel Butler's poetry emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment and being mindful of the fleeting nature of life. He encourages us to recognize the beauty and joy in the little moments and to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
2. Butler also encourages us to take risks and to be brave when facing challenges and obstacles. He reminds us that life is full of uncertainty and that it is important to stay true to ourselves and our values.
3. Lastly, Butler emphasizes the importance of being kind and compassionate to others. He reminds us that we are all connected and that we should strive to be understanding and supportive of each other.