Contributor

Samuel Butler

(1835 - 1902)

After deciding life as an Anglican minister (the occupation for which he had trained) was not for him, Samuel Butler emigrated from England to New Zealand, where he took up sheep farming. After selling the farm for a considerable sum, he returned to London, where he would spend the rest of his life writing novels that challenged Victorian notions of idealism and society. His most noted worked include 1872’s Erewhon, or Over the Range; 1887’s Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification?; and The Way of the Flesh, published posthumously in 1903.

All Writing

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1902

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty, and death of public opinion.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1902

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

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. 

—Samuel Butler, c. 1888

Issues Contributed

Cover of Technology, the Winter 2021 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly

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Happiness

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