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 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.
One who is proud of ancestry is like a turnip; there is nothing good of him but that which is underground
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.
He is greatest who is most often in men's good thoughts.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
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
Quoth Hudibras, Friend Ralph, thou hast Outrun the constable at last
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