Wit & Attitude Quote by Samuel Butler

Lying, in Butler's hands, isn't just a moral lapse; it's a perverse form of etiquette. The line flips the expected hierarchy: the liar, usually cast as weak or corrupt, becomes a kind of courtier. To lie well is to recognize power. You don't waste a flattering fiction on someone who can't hurt you, influence you, or matter to your life. The lie is a small tax paid to status.

Butler's Victorian context matters here: a culture thick with propriety, euphemism, and class choreography, where social survival often depended on knowing which truths were unspeakable in which rooms. "Respect and reverence" reads like a raised eyebrow at the era's moral vocabulary. He's borrowing the language of worship to describe something officially despised, exposing how moral condemnation often coexists with daily dependence.

The subtext is cynical but precise: honesty is frequently a privilege, not a virtue. You tell the truth most easily to equals, intimates, or people you can afford to disappoint. You lie upward, lie sideways to keep the peace, lie performatively to preserve someone else's self-image. That "compliment" is less generosity than strategy: a recognition that the other person has the social leverage to demand a version of reality that suits them.

Butler's bite is that the lie isn't merely about protecting the liar; it's about managing the lied-to. The reverence isn't admiration. It's deference, offered with a tight smile, in a world where power trains people to curate the truth.