Samuel Butler. Self-portrait, oil, 1865. St John’s College, Cambridge. Public domain.
Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) wrote Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh, and kept notebooks all his life. Not the 17th-century poet of the same name.
Words We Carry
Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →
“I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.”
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Chapter XIX — “Truth and Convenience” (1912) — ed. Henry Festing Jones
“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Chapter I — “Lord, What is Man?” (1912) — ed. Henry Festing Jones
“Life is one long process of getting tired.”
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, Chapter I — “Lord, What is Man?” (1912) — ed. Henry Festing Jones
About Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler was born at Langar Rectory in Nottinghamshire in 1835. He went to Shrewsbury School and then St John’s College, Cambridge, where he took a first in Classics in 1858.
In 1859 he sailed for New Zealand and became a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station. He wrote about it in A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (1863) and came home in 1864.
In 1872 Erewhon appeared anonymously, and people guessed at who had written it. With his friend Henry Festing Jones he also composed choral music.
All his life he carried a notebook. From 1891 he spent an hour every morning re-editing his notes. When he died in London in 1902, he left five bound volumes of them. Jones published a selection in 1912.
The Way of All Flesh, his autobiographical novel, came out in 1903, the year after his death. He is not the Samuel Butler who wrote Hudibras in the 1600s.
The Work
