Samuel Butler

Dullness is so much stronger than genius because there is so much more of it, and it is better organised and more naturally cohesive.

Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.

Genius...has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble...It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains.

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then …

Most artists, whether in religion, music, literature, painting, or what not, are shopkeepers in disguise. They hide their shop as much as they can, and keep pretending that it does not exist, but they are essentially shopkeepers and …

He [the Philosopher] should have made many mistakes and been saved often by the skin of his teeth, for the skin of one's teeth is the most teaching thing about one. He should have been, or at any rate believed himself, a great fool and a …

Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one's opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.

Many, if not most, good ideas die young — mainly from neglect on the part of the parents, but sometimes from over-fondness. Once well started, an opinion had better be left to shift for itself.

The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the …

Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point. They can be held in check more safely than they can be hurried. They can also be killed; and one of …

He who would propagate an opinion must begin by making sure of his ground and holding it firmly. There is as little use in trying to breed from weak opinion as from other weak stock.

There are some things which it is madness not to try to know but which it is almost as much madness to try to know.

People say that there are neither dragons to be killed nor distressed maidens to be rescued nowadays. I do not know, but I think I have dropped across one or two, nor do I feel sure whether the most mortal wounds have been inflicted by the …

I doubt whether any angel would find me very entertaining. As for myself, if ever I do entertain one it will have to be unawares. When people entertain others without an introduction they generally turn out more like devils than angels.

If I die prematurely, at any rate I shall be saved from being bored by my own success.

Nothing is so cruel as to try and force a man beyond his natural pace.

Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal.

Handel and William Shakespeare|Shakespeare have left us the best that any have left us; yet, in spite of this, how much of their lives was wasted.

If you tie George Frideric Handel|Handel's hands by debarring him from the rendering of human emotion, and if you set Johann Sebastian Bach|Bach's free by giving him no human emotion to render — if, in fact, you rob Handel of his …

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.

They say the test of this [literary power] is whether a man can write an inscription. I say “Can he name a kitten?” And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot.

A man's style in any art should be like his dress — it should attract as little attention as possible.

A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.

Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were crimes, and counsel should be heard on both sides.