Samuel Butler Quotes, Thoughts and images

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

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

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

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

In law, nothing is certain but the expense.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten and to leave off fighting at once.

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.

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

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.

God was satisfied with his work, and that is fatal.

A healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestion.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

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

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.

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

You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

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

Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

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