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
The history of art is the history of revivals.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.