"Opinions have vested interests just as men have."
Read quote
8 likes
Quote collection
Samuel Butler quotes (page 6 of 12)
222 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds"
Read quote
8 likes
"When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence."
Read quote
8 likes
"Be virtuous and you will be vicious."
Read quote
8 likes
"Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances."
Read quote
8 likes
"In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa."
Read quote
8 likes
"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."
Read quote
8 likes
"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."
Read quote
8 likes
"A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand."
Read quote
8 likes
"A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words."
Read quote
8 likes
"What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth."
Read quote
8 likes
"One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once."
Read quote
8 likes
"Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use."
Read quote
8 likes
"When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying."
Read quote
8 likes
"Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon."
Read quote
7 likes
"The history of art is the history of revivals."
Read quote
7 likes
"Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence."
Read quote
7 likes
"Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap."
Read quote
7 likes
"Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since."
Read quote
7 likes
"In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation."
Read quote
7 likes