Quotes by Samuel Butler

The Vanity of Human Wishes There is only one thing vainer and that is the having no wishes. Jones’s Conscience He said he had not much conscience, and what little he had was guilty. Nihilism The Nihilists do not believe in nothing; they only believe in nothing that does not commend itself to themselves; that is, they will not allow that anything may be beyond their comprehension. As their comprehension is not great their creed is, after all, very nearly nihil. On Breaking Habits To begin knocking off the habit in the evening, then the afternoon as well and, finally, the morning too is better than to begin cutting it off in the morning and then go on to the afternoon and evening. I speak from experience as regards smoking and can say that when one comes to within an hour or two of smoke-time one begins to be impatient for it, whereas there will be no impatience after the time for knocking off has been confirmed as a habit. Dogs The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. Future and Past The Will-be and the Has-been touch us more nearly than the Is. So we are more tender towards children and old people than to those who are in the prime of life. Nature As the word is now commonly used it excludes nature’s most interesting productions—the works of man. Nature is usually taken to mean mountains, rivers, clouds and undomesticated animals and plants. I am not indifferent to this half of nature, but it interests me much less than the other half. Lucky and Unlucky People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect. Definitions i As, no matter what cunning system of checks we devise, we must in the end trust some one whom we do not check, but to whom we give unreserved confidence, so there is a point at which the understanding and mental processes must be taken as understood without further question or definition in words.

They have become sluggish and unconciliatory. This is what happens to any man when he suffers from an attack of indigestion. Sea-Sickness Or, indeed, any other sickness is the inarticulate expression of the pain we feel on seeing a proselyte escape us just as we were on the point of converting it. Indigestion This, as I have said above, may be due to the naughtiness of the stiff-necked things that we have eaten, or to the poverty of our own arguments; but it may also arise from an attempt on the part of the stomach to be too damned clever, and to depart from precedent inconsiderately. The healthy stomach is nothing if not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions. Assimilation and Persecution We cannot get rid of persecution; if we feel at all we must persecute something; the mere acts of feeding and growing are acts of persecution. Our aim should be to persecute nothing but such things as are absolutely incapable of resisting us. Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. Matter Infinitely Subdivisible We must suppose it to be so, but it does not follow that we can know anything about it if it is divided into pieces smaller than a certain size; and, if we can know nothing about it when so divided, then, _qua_ us, it has no existence and therefore matter, _qua_ us, is not infinitely subdivisible. Differences We often say that things differ in degree but not in kind, as though there were a fixed line at which degree ends and kind begins. There is no such line. All differences resolve themselves into differences of degree. Everything can in the end be united with everything by easy stages if a way long enough and round-about enough be taken. Hence to the metaphysician everything will become one, being united with everything else by degrees so subtle that there is no escape from seeing the universe as a single whole. This in theory; but in practice it would get us into such a mess that we had better go on talking about differences of kind as well as of degree.

Butler_ was an omnium gatherum. Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum. vi Life is a superstition. But superstitions are not without their value. The snail’s shell is a superstition, slugs have no shells and thrive just as well. But a snail without a shell would not be a slug unless it had also the slug’s indifference to a shell. vii Life is one long process of getting tired. viii My days run through me as water through a sieve. ix Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. x Life is eight parts cards and two parts play, the unseen world is made manifest to us in the play. xi Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they reach middle life. So have most men. xii A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing. xiii Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases—though not often. xiv There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the general rule. xv Nature is essentially mean, mediocre. You can have schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is what people really care about. xvi All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. The World i The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way. ii We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one.

We can write about conscious life, but we have no consciousness of the deaths we daily die. Besides, we cannot eat our cake and have it. We cannot have _tabulæ rasæ_ and _tabulæ scriptæ_ at the same time. We cannot be at once dead enough to be reasonably registered as such, and alive enough to be able to tell people all about it. v There will come a supreme moment in which there will be care neither for ourselves nor for others, but a complete abandon, a _sans souci_ of unspeakable indifference, and this moment will never be taken from us; time cannot rob us of it but, as far as we are concerned, it will last for ever and ever without flying. So that, even for the most wretched and most guilty, there is a heaven at last where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead. vi If life is an illusion, then so is death—the greatest of all illusions. If life must not be taken too seriously—then so neither must death. vii The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive. Dissolution Death is the dissolving of a partnership, the partners to which survive and go elsewhere. It is the corruption or breaking up of that society which we have called Ourself. The corporation is at an end, both its soul and its body cease as a whole, but the immortal constituents do not cease and never will. The souls of some men transmigrate in great part into their children, but there is a large alloy in respect both of body and mind through sexual generation; the souls of other men migrate into books, pictures, music, or what not; and every one’s mind migrates somewhere, whether remembered and admired or the reverse. The living souls of Handel, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Giovanni Bellini and the other great ones appear and speak to us in their works with less alloy than they could ever speak through their children; but men’s bodies disappear absolutely on death, except they be in some measure preserved in their children and in so far as harmonics of all that has been remain.

We have wriggled into it by holding that everything is both one and many, both infinite in time and space and yet finite, both like and unlike to the same thing, both itself and not itself, both free and yet inexorably fettered, both every adjective in the dictionary and at the same time the flat contradiction of every one of them. ii The beginning of life is the beginning of an illusion to the effect that there is such a thing as free will and that there is such another thing as necessity—the recognition of the fact that there is an “I can” and an “I cannot,” an “I may” and an “I must.” iii Life is not so much a riddle to be read as a Gordian knot that will get cut sooner or later. iv Life is the distribution of an error—or errors. v Murray (the publisher) said that my _Life of Dr. Butler_ was an omnium gatherum. Yes, but life is an omnium gatherum. vi Life is a superstition. But superstitions are not without their value. The snail’s shell is a superstition, slugs have no shells and thrive just as well. But a snail without a shell would not be a slug unless it had also the slug’s indifference to a shell. vii Life is one long process of getting tired. viii My days run through me as water through a sieve. ix Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. x Life is eight parts cards and two parts play, the unseen world is made manifest to us in the play. xi Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they reach middle life. So have most men. xii A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing. xiii Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases—though not often. xiv There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule.

Is it wonderful that the boy, though always trying to keep up appearances as though he were cheerful and contented—and at times actually being so—wore often an anxious, jaded look when he thought none were looking, which told of an almost incessant conflict within? Doubtless Theobald saw these looks and knew how to interpret them, but it was his profession to know how to shut his eyes to things that were inconvenient—no clergyman could keep his benefice for a month if he could not do this; besides he had allowed himself for so many years to say things he ought not to have said, and not to say the things he ought to have said, that he was little likely to see anything that he thought it more convenient not to see unless he was made to do so. It was not much that was wanted. To make no mysteries where Nature has made none, to bring his conscience under something like reasonable control, to give Ernest his head a little more, to ask fewer questions, and to give him pocket money with a desire that it should be spent upon _menus plaisirs_ . . . “Call that not much indeed,” laughed Ernest, as I read him what I have just written. “Why it is the whole duty of a father, but it is the mystery-making which is the worst evil. If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence.” To return, however, to Roughborough. On the day of his leaving, when he was sent for into the library to be shaken hands with, he was surprised to feel that, though assuredly glad to leave, he did not do so with any especial grudge against the Doctor rankling in his breast. He had come to the end of it all, and was still alive, nor, take it all round, more seriously amiss than other people. Dr Skinner received him graciously, and was even frolicsome after his own heavy fashion. Young people are almost always placable, and Ernest felt as he went away that another such interview would not only have wiped off all old scores, but have brought him round into the ranks of the Doctor’s admirers and supporters—among whom it is only fair to say that the greater number of the more promising boys were found. Just before saying good-bye the Doctor actually took down a volume from those shelves which had seemed so awful six years previously, and gave it to him after having written his name in it, and the words φιλιας και ευνοιας χαριν, which I believe means “with all kind wishes from the donor.

” CHAPTER LXXVII I do not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he had never been married than I was. To him, however, the shock of pleasure was positively numbing in its intensity. As he felt his burden removed, he reeled for the unaccustomed lightness of his movements; his position was so shattered that his identity seemed to have been shattered also; he was as one waking up from a horrible nightmare to find himself safe and sound in bed, but who can hardly even yet believe that the room is not full of armed men who are about to spring upon him. “And it is I,” he said, “who not an hour ago complained that I was without hope. It is I, who for weeks have been railing at fortune, and saying that though she smiled on others she never smiled at me. Why, never was anyone half so fortunate as I am.” “Yes,” said I, “you have been inoculated for marriage, and have recovered.” “And yet,” he said, “I was very fond of her till she took to drinking.” “Perhaps; but is it not Tennyson who has said: ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all’?” “You are an inveterate bachelor,” was the rejoinder. Then we had a long talk with John, to whom I gave a £5 note upon the spot. He said, “Ellen had used to drink at Battersby; the cook had taught her; he had known it, but was so fond of her, that he had chanced it and married her to save her from the streets and in the hope of being able to keep her straight. She had done with him just as she had done with Ernest—made him an excellent wife as long as she kept sober, but a very bad one afterwards.” “There isn’t,” said John, “a sweeter-tempered, handier, prettier girl than she was in all England, nor one as knows better what a man likes, and how to make him happy, if you can keep her from drink; but you can’t keep her; she’s that artful she’ll get it under your very eyes, without you knowing it. If she can’t get any more of your things to pawn or sell, she’ll steal her neighbours’. That’s how she got into trouble first when I was with her. During the six months she was in prison I should have felt happy if I had not known she would come out again.

iv I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy. v A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget. vi Cursed is he that does not know when to shut his mind. An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes, or it may be found a little draughty. vii He who knows not how to wink knows not how to see; and he who knows not how to lie knows not how to speak the truth. So he who cannot suppress his opinions cannot express them. viii There can no more be a true statement without falsehood distributed through it, than a note on a well-tuned piano that is not intentionally and deliberately put out of tune to some extent in order to have the piano in the most perfect possible tune. Any perfection of tune as regards one key can only be got at the expense of all the rest. ix Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him. x I seem to see lies crowding and crushing at a narrow gate and working their way in along with truths into the domain of history. Nature’s Double Falsehood That one great lie she told about the earth being flat when she knew it was round all the time! And again how she stuck to it that the sun went round us when it was we who were going round the sun! This double falsehood has irretrievably ruined my confidence in her. There is no lie which she will not tell and stick to like a Gladstonian. How plausibly she told her tale, and how many ages was it before she was so much as suspected! And then when things did begin to look bad for her, how she brazened it out, and what a desperate business it was to bring her shifts and prevarications to book! Convenience i We wonder at its being as hard often to discover convenience as it is to discover truth. But surely convenience is truth. ii The use of truth is like the use of words; both truth and words depend greatly upon custom.

If there is one feature more characteristic of the present generation than another it is that it has been a great restorer of churches. Horace preached church restoration in his ode:— Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Romane, donec templa refeceris Aedesque labentes deorum et Foeda nigro simulacra fumo. Nothing went right with Rome for long together after the Augustan age, but whether it was because she did restore the temples or because she did not restore them I know not. They certainly went all wrong after Constantine’s time and yet Rome is still a city of some importance. I may say here that before Theobald had been many years at Battersby he found scope for useful work in the rebuilding of Battersby church, which he carried out at considerable cost, towards which he subscribed liberally himself. He was his own architect, and this saved expense; but architecture was not very well understood about the year 1834, when Theobald commenced operations, and the result is not as satisfactory as it would have been if he had waited a few years longer. Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him. I may very likely be condemning myself, all the time that I am writing this book, for I know that whether I like it or no I am portraying myself more surely than I am portraying any of the characters whom I set before the reader. I am sorry that it is so, but I cannot help it—after which sop to Nemesis I will say that Battersby church in its amended form has always struck me as a better portrait of Theobald than any sculptor or painter short of a great master would be able to produce. I remember staying with Theobald some six or seven months after he was married, and while the old church was still standing. I went to church, and felt as Naaman must have felt on certain occasions when he had to accompany his master on his return after having been cured of his leprosy. I have carried away a more vivid recollection of this and of the people, than of Theobald’s sermon. Even now I can see the men in blue smock frocks reaching to their heels, and more than one old woman in a scarlet cloak; the row of stolid, dull, vacant plough-boys, ungainly in build, uncomely in face, lifeless, apathetic, a race a good deal more like the pre-revolution French peasant as described by Carlyle than is pleasant to reflect upon—a race now supplanted by a smarter, comelier and more hopeful generation, which has discovered that it too has a right to as much happiness as it can get, and with clearer ideas about the best means of getting it.

xi Lizards generally seem to have lost their tails by the time they reach middle life. So have most men. xii A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities, as well as those of other people, will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing. xiii Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases—though not often. xiv There are two great rules of life, the one general and the other particular. The first is that every one can, in the end, get what he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule. The particular rule is that every individual is, more or less, an exception to the general rule. xv Nature is essentially mean, mediocre. You can have schemes for raising the level of this mean, but not for making every one two inches taller than his neighbour, and this is what people really care about. xvi All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. The World i The world is a gambling-table so arranged that all who enter the casino must play and all must lose more or less heavily in the long run, though they win occasionally by the way. ii We play out our days as we play out cards, taking them as they come, not knowing what they will be, hoping for a lucky card and sometimes getting one, often getting just the wrong one. iii The world may not be particularly wise—still, we know of nothing wiser. iv The world will always be governed by self-interest. We should not try to stop this, we should try to make the self-interest of cads a little more coincident with that of decent people. The Individual and the World There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.

Or can the prayer refer to the other end of life? “Lord, let me know my beginning.” This again would not be always prudent. The prayer is a silly piece of petulance and it would have served the maker of it right to have had it granted. “A painful and lingering disease followed by death” or “Ninety, a burden to yourself and every one else”—there is not so much to pick and choose between them. Surely, “I thank thee, O Lord, that thou hast hidden mine end from me” would be better. The sting of death is in foreknowledge of the when and the how. If again he had prayed that he might be able to make his psalms a little more lively, and be saved from becoming the bore which he has been to so many generations of sick persons and young children—or that he might find a publisher for them with greater facility—but there is no end to it. The prayer he did pray was about the worst he could have prayed and the psalmist, being the psalmist, naturally prayed it—unless I have misquoted him. ii Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously. I dropped saying mine suddenly once for all without malice prepense, on the night of the 29th of September, 1859, when I went on board the _Roman Emperor_ to sail for New Zealand. I had said them the night before and doubted not that I was always going to say them as I always had done hitherto. That night, I suppose, the sense of change was so great that it shook them quietly off. I was not then a sceptic; I had got as far as disbelief in infant baptism but no further. I felt no compunction of conscience, however, about leaving off my morning and evening prayers—simply I could no longer say them. iii Lead us not into temptation (Matt. vi. 13). For example; I am crossing from Calais to Dover and there is a well-known popular preacher on board, say Archdeacon Farrar. I have my camera in my hand and though the sea is rough the sun is brilliant. I see the archdeacon come on board at Calais and seat himself upon the upper deck, looking as though he had just stepped out of a band-box.