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
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
Still amorous, and fond, and billing, / Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.
The extremes of glory and of shame, Like east and west, become the same No Indian prince has to his palace - More followers than a thief to the gallows
There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?/ About two hundred pounds a year.
Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
The dead being the majority, it is natural that we should have more friends among them than among the living.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind.