Quotations by Author

Samuel Butler

Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.

All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper.

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.

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.