Samuel Butler quotes (with explanation)

Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903 with substantial revisions and published in its original form in 1964 as Ernest Pontifex or The Way of All Flesh). Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted.

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Below are Samuel Butler’s best quotes selected for you. Click on each quote to read the explanation.

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

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, can he name a kitten?

Poetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one’s own, but one does not like anyone else’s.

A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

To live is like to love, all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to them.

Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.

Logic is like the swords: those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only.

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.

An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children.

Life is one long process of getting tired.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

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

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.

Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.

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