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
I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other--I mean from the attempt to prolong family connections unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so
A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.
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.
I believe that he was really sorry that people would not believe he was sorry that he was not more sorry.
Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.
Still amorous, and fond, and billing, / Like Philip and Mary on a shilling.
Nothing is well done nor worth doing unless, take it all round, it has come pretty easily
If old Pontifex had had Cromwell's chances he would have done all that Cromwell did, and have done it better; if he had had Giotto's chances he would have done all that Giotto did, and done it no worse; as it was, he was a village carpenter, and I wi
I've known him for a long time, ... He's always been a man of integrity, always been a man of the community and the needs of the community, and the black community is going to stand behind him.
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek, As naturally as pigs squeak
Through perils both of wind and limb, Through thick and thin she followed him