Frasi di Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler
Data di nascita: 4. Dicembre 1835
Data di morte: 18. Giugno 1902
Samuel Butler è stato uno scrittore inglese.
Samuel Butler è considerato dai critici un autore vittoriano iconoclasta. Tra le sue opere più famose troviamo l'opera satirica Erewhon e il romanzo postumo The Way of All Flesh . Egli è anche noto per le sue analisi sulla ortodossia cristiana, per lo studio dell'evoluzione e dell'arte italiana e per i suoi scritti di storia e critica letteraria. Butler fu anche traduttore dell'Iliade e dell'Odissea.
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scrittore, poeta e drammaturgo britannicoFrasi Samuel Butler
„An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: An idea must not be condemned for being a little shy and incoherent; all new ideas are shy when introduced first among our old ones. We should have patience and see whether the incoherency is likely to wear off or to wear on, in which latter case the sooner we get rid of them the better.
Incoherency of New Ideas
„The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.
The Law
„There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men’s good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men’s thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.
The Individual and the World
„As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: As a general rule philosophy is like stirring mud or not letting a sleeping dog lie. It is an attempt to deny, circumvent or otherwise escape from the consequences of the interlacing of the roots of things with one another.
Philosophy
„I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: I should like to like Schumann’s music better than I do; I dare say I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all.
On Knowing what Gives us Pleasure, ii
„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.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: 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.
Genius, i
„Ideas and opinions, like living organisms, have a normal rate of growth which cannot be either checked or forced beyond a certain point.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: 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 the surest ways to kill them is to try to hurry them.
The Art of Propagating Opinion
„Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh; it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision to vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also.
„Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: Animals and plants cannot understand our business, so we have denied that they can understand their own. What we call inorganic matter cannot understand the animals’ and plants’ business, we have therefore denied that it can understand anything whatever.
Organic and Inorganic
„Critics generally come to be critics by reason not of their fitness for this but of their unfitness for anything else.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: 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.
Criticism
„We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: If a person would understand either the Odyssey or any other ancient work, he must never look at the dead without seeing the living in them, nor at the living without thinking of the dead. We are too fond of seeing the ancients as one thing and the moderns as another.
Ancient Work
„It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: As the days went slowly by he came to see that Christianity and the denial of Christianity after all met as much as any other extremes do; it was a fight about names — not about things; practically the Church of Rome, the Church of England, and the freethinker have the same ideal standard and meet in the gentleman; for he is the most perfect saint who is the most perfect gentleman. Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.
Ch. 67 http://books.google.com/books?id=wZAEAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA338
„Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: The written law is binding, but the unwritten law is much more so. You may break the written law at a pinch and on the sly if you can, but the unwritten law — which often comprises the written — must not be broken. Not being written, it is not always easy to know what it is, but this has got to be done.
The Law
„Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon.“
— Samuel Butler
Context: One reason why it is as well not to give very much detail is that, no matter how much is given, the eye will always want more; it will know very well that it is not being paid in full. On the other hand, no matter how little one gives, the eye will generally compromise by wanting only a little more. In either case the eye will want more, so one may as well stop sooner or later. Sensible painting, like sensible law, sensible writing, or sensible anything else, consists as much in knowing what to omit as what to insist upon.
Detail
