To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

—Samuel Butler

love life health reason instinct

About Samuel Butler

Portrait of Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903 with substantial revisions and published in its original form in 1964 as Ernest...

More quotations from Samuel Butler

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

—Samuel Butler

The man who lets himself be bored is even more contemptible than the bore.

—Samuel Butler

The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance.

—Samuel Butler

ignorance character vanity price arrogance

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

—Samuel Butler

kindness people perception taste cleverness

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.

—Samuel Butler

More quotations tagged with “instinct”

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

—Charles Darwin

reason instinct

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.

—Max Beerbohm

nature instinct

It's funny what love can do to a person. It strips them of everything, even their instincts. It creates a new reality for you to adhere to, a new world where you break the rules just to keep the love intact.

—Karina Halle in On Every Street

love reality instinct

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts.

—Rita Mae Brown

History

30 Jun 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.