Samuel Butler may refer to:
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
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.
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without.
Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom, while discouragement often nips it in the bud.
The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
There is such a thing as doing good that evil may come.
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.