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
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
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.
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognized for some time.
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
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.