Samuel Butler Quotes - Page 2

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• If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

  Samuel Butler

  Knowledge, Science, Ice

  Samuel Butler (1950). “The Essential Samuel Butler”, London : J. Cape

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• You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

  Samuel Butler

  Moving, Science, Littles

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.103, The Floating Press

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• 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.

  Samuel Butler

  Strong, Cat, Ideas

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4253, Delphi Classics

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• The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

  Samuel Butler

  Meat, Principles, Public Opinion

  'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 17

  6 Copy quote

• He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.

  Samuel Butler

  Agreement, Liberty, Opinion

  'Hudibras' pt. 3 (1680), canto 3, l. 547

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• Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both

  Samuel Butler

  Maturity, Demand, Women Bashing

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• There are two great rules of life; the one general and the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what he wants, if he only tries. That is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the rule.

  Samuel Butler

  Two, Exception To The Rule, Trying

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• All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it - and they do enjoy it as much as man and other circumstances will allow.

  Samuel Butler

  Animal, Men, Humanity

  'The Way of All Flesh' (1903) ch. 19

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• Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.

  Samuel Butler

  Lying, Analogies, Dishonesty

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4153, Delphi Classics

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• Whatsoever we perpetrate, we do but row; we are steered by fate.

  Samuel Butler

  Fate, Destiny

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• The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

  Samuel Butler

  Bible, Biblical, May

  Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks”

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• Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.

  Samuel Butler

  Past, History, Existence

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• History is a bucket of ashes.

  Samuel Butler

  Carpe Diem, Buckets, Ashes

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• I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.

  Samuel Butler

  Sorry, Regret, Believe

  Samuel Butler (1951). “Notebooks: Selections Edited by Geoffrey Keynes and Brian Hill”

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• Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Taken, Mean

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4256, Delphi Classics

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• There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

  Samuel Butler

  Truth, Science, Errors

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.374, The Floating Press

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• 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

  Science, Class, Giving

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4257, Delphi Classics

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• Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

  Samuel Butler

  Life, Memories, Science

  Samuel Butler (1926). “The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler: The notebooks of Samuel Butler”

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• Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Believe, Ignorance

  Samuel Butler (1968). “The note-books of Samuel Butler”

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• I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Giving, Literature

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.230, The Floating Press

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• It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion to what other accomplish, or to the time and opportunities which have been allowed him.

  Samuel Butler

  Success, Opportunity, Men

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• Neither have they hearts to stay, nor wit enough to run away.

  Samuel Butler

  Running, Heart, Enough

  Samuel Butler, “Hudibras: Part 3 - Canto II”

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• The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.

  Samuel Butler

  Beer, Animal, Imagination

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.1732, Delphi Classics

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• It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

  Samuel Butler

  Fear, Men, Atheism

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• There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.

  Samuel Butler

  Drinking, Asylums, Teetotalers

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