Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 - 18 June 1902) British writer best known for his satire Erewhon.

For the 17th-century author of Hudibras, see Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

Table of contents

1 Sourced 1.1 Ramblings In Cheapside (1890) 2 Attributed 3 External links

Sourced

• It is the manner of gods and prophets to begin: "Thou shalt have none other God or Prophet but me." If I were to start as a God or a prophet I think I should take the line: "Thou shalt not believe in me. Thou shalt not have me for a God. Thou shalt worship any d_____d thing thou likest except me." This should be my first and great commandment, and my second should be like unto it.
  • Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1912) self censored "d_____d" in original publication.

• Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
  • First lines of Butler's translation of The Iliad

• On Schumann's Music: I should like to like it better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.
  • The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, vol I (1984) p.125

• An idiot is a person who thinks for himself instead of letting other people think for him. He takes his own views of things and therefore not unfrequently differs from his neighbors. Any person who differs from his neighbors is an idiot ipso facto.
  • The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, vol I (1984) p.126

• American Dishonesty: Refer it to their Puritan ancestry
  • The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, vol I (1984) p. 80

• Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
  • "The Way of All Flesh" (1903)

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

Universal Review (December 1890)

• The turtle obviously had no sense of proportion; it differed so widely from myself that I could not comprehend it; and as this word occurred to me, it occurred also that until my body comprehended its body in a physical material sense, neither would my mind be able to comprehend its mind with any thoroughness. For unity of mind can only be consummated by unity of body; everything, therefore, must be in some respects both knave and fool to all that which has not eaten it, or by which it has not been eaten. As long as the turtle was in the window and I in the street outside, there was no chance of our comprehending one another.
  Nevertheless, I knew that I could get it to agree with me if I could so effectually buttonhole and fasten on to it as to eat it. Most men have an easy method with turtle soup, and I had no misgiving but that if I could bring my first premise to bear I should prove the better reasoner. My difficulty lay in this initial process, for I had not with me the argument that would alone compel Mr. Sweeting to think that I ought to be allowed to convert the turtles - I mean I had no money in my pocket. No missionary enterprise can be carried on without any money at all, but even so small a sum as half a crown would, I suppose, have enabled me to bring the turtle partly round, and with many half-crowns I could in time no doubt convert the lot, for the turtle needs must go where the money drives. If, as is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith— things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence.

• We can see nothing face to face; our utmost seeing is but a fumbling of blind finger-ends in an overcrowded pocket.

• The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.

• We meet people every day whose bodies are evidently those of men and women long dead, but whose appearance we know through their portraits.

• I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very angry if anyone gives me one for my private library.

• If a man would get hold of the public era, he must pay, marry, or fight

• I should not advise anyone with ordinary independence of mind to attempt the public ear unless he is confident that he can out-lung and out-last his own generation; for if he has any force, people will and ought to be on their guard against him, inasmuch as there is no knowing where he may not take them.

• We do not know what death is. If we know so little about life which we have experienced, how shall be know about death which we have not - and in the nature of things never can?

• All we know is, that even the humblest dead may live along after all trace of the body has disappeared; we see them doing it in the bodies and memories of these that come after them; and not a few live so much longer and more effectually than is desirable, that it has been necessary to get rid of them by Act of Parliament. It is love that alone gives life, and the truest life is that which we live not in ourselves but vicariously in others, and with which we have no concern. Our concern is so to order ourselves that we may be of the number of them that enter into life— although we know it not.

• Slugs have ridden their contempt for defensive armour as much to death as the turtles their pursuit of it. They have hardly more than skin enough to hold themselves together; they court death every time they cross the road. Yet death comes not to them more than to the turtle, whose defences are so great that there is little left inside to be defended. Moreover, the slugs fare best in the long run, for turtles are dying out, while slugs are not, and there must be millions of slugs all over the world over for every single turtle.

• Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh; it is meteoric - suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision to vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.

• Whether the universe is really a paying concern, or whether it is an inflated bubble that must burst sooner or later, this is another matter. If people were to demand cash payment in irrefragable certainty for everything that they have taken hitherto as paper money on the credit of the bank of public opinion, is there money enough behind it all to stand so great a drain even on so great a reserve?

• By a merciful dispensation of Providence university training is almost as costly as it is unprofitable. The majority will thus be always unable to afford it, and will base their opinions on mother wit and current opinion rather than on demonstration.

Attributed

• The oldest books are still ony just out to those who have not read them.
• Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
• Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

External links

• Erewhon at Project Gutenberg
• Erewhon Revisited at Project Gutenberg