413 Quotes by Samuel Butler

Embryo minds, like embryo bodies, pass through a number of strange metamorphoses before they adopt their final shape.

It is hard enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of different times of one’s life; the utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as we are not distinctly aware of being miserable.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.

Conscience is thoroughly well bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

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 sooner we get rid of them the better.

If it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that she meant well.

Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself.

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