Life & Wisdom Quote by Samuel Butler

Butler’s line flatters human nature while quietly putting it on trial. “Good company” sounds like a social nicety, but he frames it as a symptom: people become tolerable - even magnetic - when they’re aligned with their own appetite. The implication is sharp. Much of what passes for personality in mixed company is really friction from misfit lives: obligations worn like ill-fitting clothes, moral posturing, small talk as self-defense. Enjoyment, in Butler’s view, isn’t a dessert after the work; it’s a diagnostic tool. If someone is sour, maybe the problem isn’t their character so much as the role they’re trapped in.

The subtext is also a critique of Victorian respectability. Butler lived in a culture that prized duty, restraint, and “proper” occupation, and he spent years wrestling with inherited expectations (including a religious upbringing and pressure toward conventional success). Against that backdrop, “really enjoy” is doing heavy work: not mere leisure, not socially approved hobbies, but the private, stubborn pleasure that makes a person forget to perform. When people are absorbed, they stop curating themselves for an audience. They become porous, generous, less defensive - because they’re not negotiating status every second.

There’s a sly social argument here, too. If you want better company, don’t demand better manners; change the conditions. Build a life - or a room - where people can do what animates them, and the charm follows as a byproduct.