413 Quotes by Samuel Butler

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

Stowed away in a Montreal lumber room / The Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall; / Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught, / Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth: / O God! O Montreal!

To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

An empty house is like a stray dog or a body from which life has departed.

Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

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.

An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the