Samuel Butler Quotes

Thought reading is like the circulation of the blood. We are all thought readers only we don't pay attention to it.

To die is but to leave off dying and do the thing once for all.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind.

Entertaining angels unawares: It is always we who are to entertain the angels, and never they us. I cannot, however, think that an angel would be a very entertaining person, either as guest or host.

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

Man is a jelly which quivers so much as to run about.

Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.