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
Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket, and the older he grows, the more things will he promptly consign to it.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.