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
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.
An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is, like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty.
Through perils both of wind and limb, Through thick and thin she followed him
To himself every one is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
To me it seems that youth is like spring, an over-praised season delightful if it happens to be a favored one, but in practice very rarely favored and more remarkable, as a general rule, for biting east winds than genial breezes
To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched, And count their chickens ere they're hatched
Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek, As naturally as pigs squeak
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.
To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underground
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