Erewhon; Or, over the Range

“Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.””

— Samuel Butler

“Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.””

— Samuel Butler

“It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.””

— Samuel Butler

“As there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere.””

— Samuel Butler

“Mention but the word "divinity," and our sense of the divine is clouded.””

— Samuel Butler

“I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism”

— Samuel Butler

“There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness, in the fact of machines possessing little consciousness now should provide small comfort. ...what will they not in the end become?””

— Samuel Butler

“I firmly believe that the same thing would happen in nine families out of ten if the parents were merely to remember how they felt when they were young, and actually to behave towards their children as they would have had their own parents behave towards themselves. But this, which would appear to be so simple and obvious, seems also to be a thing which not one in a hundred thousand is able to put in practice.””

— Samuel Butler

“It stands to reason that he who would cure a moral ailment must be practically acquainted with it in all its bearings.””

— Samuel Butler