Samuel Butler Quotes

Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat; Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.

Compound for sins, they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.

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

Pleasure after all is a safer guide than either right or duty.

New Zealand seems far better adapted to developand maintain in health the physical than the intellectual nature.

A mountain here is only beautiful if it has good grass on it. Scenery is not scenery – it is ‘country’… If it is good for sheep, it is beautiful, magnificent, and all the rest of it; if not, it is not worth looking at.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

Surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, […]

And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks.