3 December 2020 Samuel Butler Life is like music it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, ‘Can he name a kitten?’
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 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.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
3 December 2020 Samuel Butler Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
