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
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.
There should be asylums for habitual teetotalers, but they would probably relapse into teetotalism as soon as they got out.
A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning the main aim of his life.
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.