Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.
Samuel ButlerRead
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People value their image and how others perceive their taste more than their actual qualities or virtues.
This quote suggests that individuals prioritize the perception of having good taste over being recognized for their inherent goodness, intelligence, or likability. It reflects a societal tendency to place higher importance on external judgments and trends rather than on authenticity or personal virtues.
Themes
TastePerceptionSocietyImageValues
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about fashion trends, this quote could highlight how much effort people put into looking stylish.
More from Samuel Butler
All quotes βTo know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
Samuel ButlerRead
Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them.
Samuel ButlerRead
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel ButlerRead
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
Samuel ButlerRead
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Samuel ButlerRead
Similar quotes
Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does. Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma.
Oriana FallaciRead
Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.
Jim WallisRead
A yogi's brain extends from the bottom of the foot to the top of his head
B.K.S. IyengarRead
Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprootings of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter, that I bless.
Pierre Teilhard De ChardinRead
I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.
Martin BuberRead
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.
Leo TolstoyRead