Samuel Butler Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The only absolute morality is absolute stagnation.

  Samuel Butler

  Ethics, Morality, Stagnation

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4218, Delphi Classics

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• They say the test of [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kitten?" And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

  Samuel Butler

  Writing, Cat, Men

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4166, Delphi Classics

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• The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

  Samuel Butler

  Meat, Principles, Public Opinion

  'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 17

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• Cat-Ideas and Mouse-Ideas. We can never get rid of mouse-ideas completely, they keep turning up again and again, and nibble, nibble-no matter how often we drive them off. The best way to keep them down is to have a few good strong cat-ideas which will embrace them and ensure their not reappearing till they do so in another shape.

  Samuel Butler

  Strong, Cat, Ideas

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4253, Delphi Classics

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• A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

  Samuel Butler

  Wall, Science, Ideas

  'Notebooks' (1912) ch. 14

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• Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

  Samuel Butler

  Justice, Injustice, Justice And Injustice

  Collected in H F Jones (ed) The Notebooks of Samuel Butler (1912).

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• You cannot have a thing "matter" by itself which shall have no motion in it, nor yet a thing "motion" by itself which shall exist apart from matter; you must have both or neither. You can have matter moving much, or little, and in all conceivable ways; but you cannot have matter without any motion more than you can have motion without any matter that is moving.

  Samuel Butler

  Moving, Science, Littles

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.103, The Floating Press

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• The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

  Samuel Butler

  Character, Wish, Opinion

  1872 Erewhon.

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• People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

  Samuel Butler

  Happiness, Work, People

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.2084, Delphi Classics

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• There are two classes [of scientists], those who want to know, and do not care whether others think they know or not, and those who do not much care about knowing, but care very greatly about being reputed as knowing.

  Samuel Butler

  Knowledge, Science, Thinking

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.272, The Floating Press

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• It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.

  Samuel Butler

  Fear, Men, Atheism

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• Nature. As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature's most interesting productions-the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Taken, Mean

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4256, Delphi Classics

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• There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

  Samuel Butler

  Truth, Science, Errors

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.374, The Floating Press

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• There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Class, Giving

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4257, Delphi Classics

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• Whereas, to borrow an illustration from mathematics, life was formerly an equation of, say, 100 unknown quantities, it is now one of 99 only, inasmuch as memory and heredity have been shown to be one and the same thing.

  Samuel Butler

  Life, Memories, Science

  Samuel Butler (1926). “The Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of Samuel Butler: The notebooks of Samuel Butler”

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• Science is being daily more and more personified and anthromorphized into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, &c.; and they will burn people for saying that science, after all, is only an expression for our ignorance of our own ignorance.

  Samuel Butler

  Nature, Believe, Ignorance

  Samuel Butler (1968). “The note-books of Samuel Butler”

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• I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific bigwigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Giving, Literature

  Samuel Butler (2014). “The Notebooks of Samuel Butler”, p.230, The Floating Press

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• The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.

  Samuel Butler

  Beer, Animal, Imagination

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.1732, Delphi Classics

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• If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

  Samuel Butler

  Knowledge, Science, Ice

  Samuel Butler (1950). “The Essential Samuel Butler”, London : J. Cape

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• We all love best not those who offend us least, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

  Samuel Butler

  Forgiveness, Love Is, Forgiving

  Samuel Butler (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Butler (Illustrated)”, p.4367, Delphi Classics

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