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
It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.
Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both
I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.
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.
This world is like Noah's Ark. In which few men but many beasts embark.
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously.
Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him.
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.
Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
Flying. Whatever any other organism has been able to do man should surely be able to do also, though he may go a different way about it.
Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.
There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.