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
Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast Outrun the constable at last
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Friends are like money, easier made than kept.
The world will only, in the end, follow those who have despised as well as served it.
Science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.
Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat; Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate
Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek, As naturally as pigs squeak
The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much about not being a thief any more. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.
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